Man Booker Shortlist 2009
Prestigious Literary Prize List is Announced
The six novels in the running for this year's Man Booker Prize for Fiction have been announced. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 6th October at London's Guildhall, with the winning writer likely to experience a significant increase in sales as well as pocketing the £50,000 prize.
The Shortlist is as Follows:
The Children's Book, A. S. Byatt
Summertime, J. M. Coetzee
The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds
Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room, Simon Mawer
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
Previous Winners of the Booker Prize
The shortlist includes two previous winners of the prize: A. S. Byatt took the award in 1990 for Possession, and J. M. Coetzee has won twice before - in 1983 with Life and Times of Michael K and in 1999 with Disgrace. Sarah Waters, despite huge popular acclaim and a number of other prestigious titles such as the Betty Trask Award, has never won the Booker, although she has been nominated twice: with Fingersmith in 2002 and The Night Watch in 2006.
None of the other short-listed authors has won or been nominated before, although Hilary Mantel's 2005 novel Beyond Black was nominated for both the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Adam Foulds is the youngest on the list, aged just 34. The Quickening Maze, which imagines the life of the poet John Clare in a Victorian asylum, is only his second novel. Along with Foulds, Simon Mawer is perhaps the other name that readers may not recognise from the short-list, despite The Glass Room being his eighth novel.
Betting Odds for the 2009 Booker Prize
Although the short-list has only been announced today, Hilary Mantel is already the favourite with the bookies to win the prize, although this may change in the next month. Many will want Coetzee to win, as doing so would make him the first writer to win the award three times, whereas others may feel Sarah Waters is long overdue recognition for her work.
Each of the short-listed writers has already won £2500 and a designer bound edition of their own book, as well as the increase in sales the publicity for such a famous award is likely to generate.
Full details of each of the nominated books can be found on the Booker website, along with the opportunity to download extracts from each book onto a mobile phone. The website also allows readers to share their thoughts on this year's nominees as well as offering interviews with the short-listed writers.
Cover of Adam Foulds' The Quickening Maze
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