Award winners and newbies vie for prestigious Man Booker Prize

Earlier today, the Man Booker Prize longlist was released for its 2012 award. In a strange twist, standard, internationally-known names like Martin Amis and Zadie Smith were spurned in favor of other authors with something to prove and the talent to do so.

Among those listed include the renowned Will Self, whose novel Umbrella is the first to be nominated out of his nine works of fiction to date. While Michael Frayn has a Tony Award for his play Copenhagen and a Whitbread Best Novel Award for his book Spies, he has yet to earn a Man Booker. And novelist Hilary Mantel (Bring up the Bodies), who won the award in 2009 for her book Wolf Hall, will see if she can claim the prize for a second time.

Chosen from over 145 titles, this year's longlist also contains three novels from independent presses and four debut works. Authors range in age from 27 (wunderkind Ned Beauman) to 77 (South African writer André Brink).

The Man Booker Prize is given annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year. Those eligible for the award must be a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Along with the accolade, winners also receive a sum of £50,000, making it one of the world's richest literary awards. Although the Man Booker Prize is only presented to one author, it is considered highly prestigious to be included in the shortlist and the longlist; the latter are nicknamed the "Man Booker Dozen."

The short list for the award will be released in September, and the winner will be announced on October 16th. You can view the complete longlist here.