On Tuesday the shortlist of six authors contending for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced. Of the 13 books on the longlist, also known as the Booker dozen, the familiar names of Julian Barnes, Sebastian Barry and Alan Hollinghurst are the bookies’ favourites.
Apart from inching someone closer to a prize of £50,000 (€56,500), a place on the shortlist provides a boost in sales. The nominees saw a 111 per cent rise in sales in the week after the longlist was announced in July. One of the chosen books, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers, sold just 164 copies the previous week.
Irish hopeful Barry is nominated for his seventh novel, On Canaan's Side, having been shortlisted for the award in 2005 and 2008. Along with DJ Taylor's Derby Dayand Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, Barry's main challenger appears to be Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child, the release of which was billed as the UK publishing event of the year. It is Hollinghurst's first novel since he won the prize with The Line of Beauty, seven years ago.
Stephen Kelman, one of four debut writers hoping to make the cut, is in contention for Pigeon English, a novel nearly overlooked in an agent's slush pile before Bloomsbury won a bidding war to publish it.
There are five judges and, according to the prize’s literary director, Ion Trewin, the final decision has never been unanimous. The winner will be announced on October 18th.
