Booker shortlist travels back in time

Published on Tuesday 8 September 2009 22:05

A HISTORICAL novel about Henry VIII's adviser, Thomas Cromwell, leads the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize, which was revealed yesterday.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, which tells the story of Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court, is the bookmakers' favourite to win the prestigious award.

South African author JM Coetzee also made the shortlist with his fictionalised memoir Summertime, putting him in line for what would be an unprecedented third Booker.

Sarah Waters will be hoping to make it third time lucky with her novel The Little Stranger – she has been shortlisted twice before without winning.

The Man Booker Prize is worth 50,000 to the winner, but inevitably leads to a huge jump in sales, as well as international acclaim.

Last year's prize went to Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger, which has sold more than half a million copies and been translated into 30 languages.

Completing the shortlist of books that will compete for this year's prize are Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, Adam Foulds' The Quickening Maze and AS Byatt's The Children's Book. Now in its 41st year, the prize recognises the best new fiction in English, and any writer from the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth is eligible.

A total of 132 books were considered for this year's long list of 13, announced on 28 July, and after three hours of intense discussion, the panel of judges whittled the list down to six titles.

James Naughtie, chairman of judges, said the six shortlisted authors were all writers at the peak of their powers.

"We feel it's a really strong shortlist," he said. "We had quite a tough time because it was such a good long list. It was a tough time, without blood but with tears, because we had to say goodbye to some of the books. They are all very, very good books that entranced us in different ways."

He added that the judges had not yet given thought to who might win the prize and said choosing one would be an enormous challenge.

Coetzee won the Booker in 1999 with Disgrace and in 1983 with Life & Times Of Michael K, and Summertime completes the trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood And Youth.

Naughtie defended the memoir's inclusion in the list, saying the book used "all the tools of fiction" to tell its story and was certainly not an autobiography in the conventional sense.

The book recounts a young English biographer's attempt to write the life story of a dead South African author, John Coetzee, through interviews with people who knew him.

One of the judges, Michael Prodger, the literary editor of The Sunday Telegraph, said, as an account of his character, Coetzee's book was both "unbelievably self-flagellating", creating a picture of a heartless and unpleasant man, and beautifully written.

"We all came away from this book wishing we could write like JM Coetzee but profoundly glad we were not JM Coetzee," Mr Prodger said.

Byatt is the only other former Booker winner on the shortlist – her novel Possession won in 1990 – and, at 34, Foulds is the youngest author on this year's list.