Each year, the Booker Prize shortlist sparks a litany of familiar criticisms. Too many worthy novels! Too many chosen not for their quality, but because they give the right ideological signals! And a new cry in recent years: too many Americans! Thankfully, not this year. In the 2023 shortlist, culled from a surprisingly unstarry longlist of 13, gone are the novels that treat social issues too dutifully; gone too are the ones that have vaulting formal ambition, but can make for harder readerly work. Granted, on the six-strong list, two Americans get the nod – Paul Harding and debut novelist Jonathan Escoffery – and granted, there’s only one Briton: Chetna Maroo . But Sarah Bernstein , born in Canada but resident in the Highlands, might as well be an honorary Scot, while it’s a success for Irish fiction – representatively so – with the other two writers on the list, Paul Murray and Paul Lynch . More importantly, these novels are all very good.…