LONDON, Sept 24 — Actress Sarah Jessica Parker has described helping pick this year’s Booker Prize shortlist as “real agony,” but said it was also a “privilege,” according to the BBC.

The Sex and the City star is one of five judges who narrowed a 13-book longlist to six novels, all competing for the prestigious award, with the winner to be announced on November 10 in London.

The shortlist features Indian-born Kiran Desai, returning 19 years after her first Booker win, alongside past nominees Andrew Miller and David Szalay.

US writers Susan Choi, Katie Kitamura, and Ben Markovits complete the line-up.

Parker told the BBC: “There’s nothing casual about letting a book go… we all had a couple of books that our heart was broken [to lose].”

Choi’s Flashlight, spanning generations and countries, was called by the judges “one of those books that completely dominates your thoughts”. 

Meanwhile, Kitamura’s Audition, soon to be adapted into a Lucy Liu film, is described as “a brilliantly tense, taut novel… Audition makes existential detectives of us all”.

Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is “an intimate and expansive epic… Rich in meditations about class, race and nationhood, this book has it all,” according to the judges

The jury, chaired by former winner Roddy Doyle and including Kiley Reid, Chris Power, and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, praised the shortlist for its depth, suspense, and emotional resonance. 

Seven longlisted books, including The South by Malaysian author Tash Aw, did not make the cut.