Author Colm Tóibín's "The Testament of Mary" is the slimmest book to be nominated for the 2013 Booker Prize after the shortlist was announced earlier this week.

The book consists of 104 pages and 30,000 words. Many speculated whether the book was actually a novel or a short story. However, according to Judge Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, there were many reasons that Tóibín's book qualified as a novel

"Yes it is compact, but it is also dense and it is far-reaching. This is a short novel but one we felt is long in the memory," he said.

Six books were shortlisted and nominated for the 2013 Booker Prize. The other five books include:

- We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)

- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)

- The Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)

- The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)

- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)

"This is a shortlist that shows the English language novel to be a form of world literature. It is a shortlist that crosses continents, joins countries and spans the centuries," chair of judges, Robert Macfarlane said in a press statement. "If anything connected the works, it was that they were all about ways of relating. They are all, all about the strange ways people are brought together and the painful ways in which they are held apart."

Other judges include BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney, the classicist and critic Natalie Haynes, and the former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday Stuart Kelly. The winner of the prize will be announced October 17.