LONDON.- Paul Murray’s “The Bee Sting,” a tragicomedy about a family on the brink of financial ruin, and Jonathan Escoffery’s “If I Survive You,” which explores an American of Jamaican descent’s struggles with identity, are among six titles shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize — one of the highest profile awards in literature.

The shortlist, announced during an event at the National Portrait Gallery in London on Thursday, also includes Chetna Maroo’s “Western Lane,” about a squash prodigy coping with grief, and Paul Harding’s “This Other Eden,” about an isolated mixed-race community that is troubled by outsiders.

Sarah Bernstein’s “Study for Obedience,” about a woman who travels to her brother’s home only to find that the local population is scared of her, and Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song,” in which Ireland is reimagined as a totalitarian state, are the other two titles.

The six books all gestured at “the unease of our moment,” said Esi Edugyan, a novelist and the chair of this year’s judging panel. The novels included “portraits of societies pushed to the edge of tolerance” and “unflinching” examinations of generational trauma, Edugyan added in a news release announcing the list.

The Booker Prize, which was founded in 1969, is awarded each year to the author of a novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. It regularly helps birth literary stars. Last year, Shehan Karunatilaka, a Sri Lankan author, won for “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida,” a satire exploring the trauma of his country’s civil war.

Other recent winners include Damon Galgut, Douglas Stuart and Bernardine Evaristo.

The 13-strong longlist for this year’s prize, announced in August, was notable for containing four debut novels, and lacking household names. Sebastian Barry’s “Old God’s Time,” about a policeman whose quiet retirement is interrupted by an old case, was the highest-profile title.

Barry did not make Thursday’s shortlist. Robert Webb, an actor, author and one of the judges, said at a news conference that omitting Barry’s novel had been “very difficult” but “there are only six places.”

Of the four longlisted debuts, only two — Maroo’s “Western Lane” and Escoffery’s “If I Survive You” — survived what Edugyan said were 4 1/2 hours of “very collegiate, but intense,” deliberations. “We got there in the end,” Edugyan added: “Everybody was still speaking to each other.”

The judges, who also include actor Adjoa Andoh, poet Mary Jean Chan and Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, will now read the shortlisted books a final time before announcing the winner during a ceremony in London on Nov. 26. The winning author will receive 50,000 pounds (about $61,400).

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.