BBC News Online: Entertainment

Novelists line up for Booker Prize

The prize, the UK's most prestigious literary award, guarantees a huge increase in sales for the winner and recognition around the world.

Debut novelist Andrew O'Hagan competes with former winner JM Coetzee for this year's prize.

Last year, Ian McEwan's novel Amsterdam - about a Cabinet minister involved in a sex scandal - won the prize, as well as £21,000 for the author.

This year's shortlist is:

• Disgrace, by JM Coetzee
• Fasting, Feasting, by Anita Desai
• Headlong, by Michael Frayn
• Our Fathers, by Andrew O'Hagan
• The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif
• The Blackwater Lightship, by Colm Tobin

This year's judging panel is led by Labour MP and chairman of the House of Commons' Culture Select Committee Gerald Kaufman.

He said: "The judges found at least ten novels to be of major stature. This made the final choice particularly difficult and of these ten books was carefully and strongly discussed until the list had been refined down to six.

"This shortlist is one of the strongest for years; and choosing one of the six to win the prize will be a really challenging task."

Kaufman and his team will announce their choice on 25 October at a dinner at the Guildhall in London.

Ian McEwan's prize last year helped Amsterdam to sell over 290,000 copies, and 129 books were entered for this year's prize, the 31st award.

But the publicity had a down side - McEwan found himself in the media spotlight recently regarding his court battle with his wife over custody of his two sons.

JM Coetzee is hoping for his second Booker prize with Disgrace. Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town, he won in 1983 with Life & Times of Michael K. His new novel is about a Cape Town professor who lives on his sister's farm following an affair with a student.

First-time novelist Andrew O'Hagan's Our Fathers describes a dying socialist as he watches the council estates he helped build be destroyed around him - along with much else that he believes in. A writer for The Guardian, O'Hagan's last book, The Missing, was shortlisted for three major awards.

Anita Desai has already been shortlisted twice for the Booker. Fasting, Feasting follows an Indian student spending the summer holiday with a family in the US.

Michael Frayn's Headlong deals with art and philosophy, while Ahdaf Soueif's The Map Of Love tells the story of a romance between an Englishwoman and an Egyptian man who meet at the turn of the century. Meanwhile, Colm Toibin deals with the generation gap in contemporary Ireland in The Blackwater Lightship.

Some commentators had expected the shortlist for the prize - open to any author in the UK or Commonwealth - to include Indian-born heavyweights Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie.

But neither Seth's An Equal Music nor Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet made the final six.

Relevant Stories

Novelist's ex-wife 'gagged' (07 Sep 99 | UK)
Booker win for Ian McEwan (28 Oct 98 | Entertainment)

Internet Links

The Booker Prize

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.