London:
Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Lowland" has emerged a frontrunner among 13 novels longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year.
London-born Lahiri's moving tale of family ties will vie for the prestigious literary prize worth 50,000 pounds alongside novels by several lesser-known authors.
Lahiri's stories capture dislocation and ambivalence with a unique play of words.
"The Lowland", set in India and America, will be published in September and is one of the highly anticipated books of the fall. It is being pitched as an easy frontrunner in London's literary circles.
Lahiri, born in 1967 in London and based in New York, is the daughter of Indian immigrants from West Bengal.
She won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with her debut short story collection "Interpreter of Maladies" (1999), and her first novel "The Namesake" (2003) was adapted into a popular film of the same name by director Mira Nair.
"There was no policy of giant-killing or sacred cow slaughter," said Robert Macfarlane, the chair of judges, in reference to the lack of big names like Margaret Atwood or J M Coetzee in the list.
"The list ranges from the traditional to the experimental, from the first century AD to the present day, from 100 pages to 1,000 and from Shanghai to Hendon."