Three Canadians are among the 13 novelists nominated for this year's Man Booker Prize, one of the world's top literary prizes for writing in English.

Esi Edugyan of Victoria is nominated for Half Blood Blues, Toronto's Alison Pick got the nod for Far to Go and Patrick deWitt of Vancouver Island made the long list for The Sisters Brothers.

They will compete with 10 other writers, including Britain's Alan Hollinghurst, who won the prize in 2004 for The Line of Beauty. His new novel is The Stranger's Child, a family saga that delineates the impact of the British class system over nearly a century.

Previously shortlisted writers Sebastian Barry and Julian Barnes are also nominated again this year.

The full long list:

  • Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.
  • Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side.
  • Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie.
  • Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers.
  • Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues.
  • Yvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats.
  • Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child.
  • Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English.
  • Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days.
  • A.D. Miller, Snowdrops.
  • Alison Pick, Far to Go.
  • Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb.
  • D.J. Taylor, Derby Day.

Four first-time novelists made the list — Kelman, Miller, Edwards and McGuinness. The long list was chosen from among 138 nominees.

"We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our long list, which emerged from an impassioned discussion," said Stella Rimington, chair of the five-person judging panel.

"The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest, and includes four first novels."

DeWitt, who now lives in the U.S., writes about two cowboy assassins tasked with tracking down a gold prospector with a secret in The Sisters Brothers.

Edugyan, born in Calgary and a writing teacher at the University of Victoria, tells the story of a brilliant jazz musician who faces racial barriers in 1940s Paris in Half Blood Blues.

Poet and novelist Pick's Far to Go follows a secular Jewish Czech family in the months leading up to Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The short list of six authors will be announced on Sept. 6, with the winner of the £50,000 annual prize named on Oct. 18.

Last year's Man Booker Prize was won by Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question.