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Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English (Bloomsbury) has made the shortlist of the £10,000 Guardian First Book Award, equaling its achievement on the Man Booker Prize this year, with Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (And Other Stories) also making the final five.
The shortlist is completed by Amy Waldman's The Submission (William Heinemann), a novel about the tensions arising around the building of a 9/11 memorial; Kashmiri author Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator (Viking); and American cancer specialist Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies (Fourth Estate), a biography of the disease which is the only non-fiction book to make the shortlist this year.
The prize, which is open to all first-time authors writing in English, or translated into English, across all genres, is being judged by chair Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, as well as authors David Nicholls, Antonia Fraser and Sarah Churchill; Waterstone's literary events coordinator Stuart Broom; and Guardian deputy editor Katharine Viner. The panel worked with Waterstone's reading groups to whittle down the longlist.
The winner will be announced on 1st December.