York writer who works in bookshop nominated for Booker prize for debut novel

A 29-year-old debut novelist from York has been shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize for a book she began writing on her mobile phone on her way to work.

British writer Fiona Mozley is up for one of the world's most prestigiousliterary prizes for Elmet, described by judges as "timeless in its epic mixtureof violence and love".

Mozley began writing Elmet, set in the copses of Yorkshire, on a train fromYork, where she had been visiting family and where she grew up, to London, where she was going straight to work.

Elmet wrote the first chapter as the landscape of her native Yorkshire whizzed past the window.

The author previously said that she kept her writing secret from friendsbecause it spurred her on.

"I did not want to set myself up for a fall, I didn't want to expect it to bepublished," the author, who has worked for a literary agency in London,previously told the Evening Standard.

"I thought, if I didn't tell my friends I was writing it I'd be more likely tofinish. So I just got on with it."

The result, Elmet, has been described as a "forceful" and "tremendouslypotent" first novel, which is "also timely" on the "doomed resistance to theencouragement of an ever more faceless world".

Since the longlist was announced, Elmet's publisher, JM Originals, printed13,000 copies but with the shortlist announcement it decided to make anadditional 15,000.

The winner of the shortlist, which features three men and three women, will be announced on October 17.