Philip Hensher reviews the Man Booker prize longlist

The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in identifying what is most interesting in English-language fiction and others when the task has been comprehensively flunked. With Robert Macfarlane as chairman, 2013 promises to be very good; 2011, which was in fact a strong year for fiction, was widely agreed to be a catastrophe; 2012, while an improvement, was disappointing in that it reflected the conventional tastes of academics.