The longlist for the richest award for writing in English has been announced. And the longlist is, in fact, long, with 147 authors in contention for the 2009 Impac Dublin prize of £100,000.

From the Guardian:

The list, drawn from any fiction published in English — including translations — is made up of nominations from 157 libraries in 117 cities and 41 countries worldwide. Selected books include most of the literary novels rewarded elsewhere in the last year, as well as titles less familiar to British readers. Perhaps the most unexpected appearance on the list is from Ken Follett, best known for his bestselling techno-thrillers, whose World Without End is the sequel to his medieval epic The Pillars of the Earth.

The selected titles now go forward for judging to a panel of five novelists — Gabrielle Alioth, Rachel Billington, Vesna Goldsworthy, James Ryan and Timothy Taylor — chaired by the former U.S. appeals judge Eugene R. Sullivan.

Canadian contenders on the list include Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero, which was nominated by 13 libraries (making it the second most-popular book, behind A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which received 18 nominations); Effigy by Alissa York; Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay; October by Richard B. Wright; Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani;  Soucouyant by David Chariandy; Spanish Fly by Will Ferguson; The Architects Are Here by Michael Winter; The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill; The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland; The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards; The Milk Chicken Bomb by Andrew Wedderburn; and The Outlander by Gil Adamson.

Rawi Hage took the prize last year for De Niro’s Game.