Plantation slaves, Russian anarchists and a Tudor lawyer battle it out for book prize

NOVELS about Russian anarchists, Jamaican slaves, Irish actresses, turn-of-the century inventors, Tudor courtiers and the first Europeans in Japan are among the books fighting it out for the second Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction - the biggest annual UK literary award to be judged outside London.

The shortlist for the 25,000 prize, sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, includes The Long Song, the latest novel by Andrea Levy - whose book Small Island was voted the best-ever winner of the Orange Prize - and The Thousand Summers of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell, who has been ranked by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

Joseph O'Connor, the author of the international bestseller Star of the Sea, is shortlisted for his novel Ghost Light, the story of the Irish playwright JM Synge's affair with his leading lady. Peter Carey, himself a double Man Booker Prize winner, has hailed the work as "the most enthralling and perfect book I have recently read".

Tom McCarthy's C, which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker, also makes the cut. So too do To Kill A Tsar - the second novel by Edinburgh thriller writer Andrew Williams, which is set in 1880s Russia - and Heartstone, the fifth in CJ Sansom's acclaimed series featuring Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked investigative lawyer in the reign of England's King Henry VIII.

The inaugural Walter Scott Prize last year was won by Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. With hindsight, that looks like a relatively easy decision: uniquely, it had already been shortlisted for every major literary award in the UK.

This year, the judges have a harder choice. Which do they go for - Samson's sheer narrative pull or McCarthy's intellectual brio? Mitchell's hugely atmospheric book about the 18th century Dutch traders on a man-made island off Nagasaki - and the story of the opening up of the East to the West - or Williams's book about the group of plotters in St Petersburg who can be seen as the first modern terrorists? Levy's epic tale about the end of slavery on a Jamaican plantation or O'Connor's tightly-focused story of a remembered love affair?

All of the shortlisted authors have been invited to attend the Borders Book Festival at Melrose, whose programme will be announced next week. They are also invited to stay with the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch as their guests, and are also offered a tour of Sir Walter Scott's nearby house, Abbotsford.

Although last year's awards ceremony took place at Abbotsford, this year the event will be part of the Borders Book Festival in Melrose.

Alistair Moffat, Borders Book Festival director and chairman of the prize, said: "Unlike the London-based literary awards we think it is important that we should be open to the public.

"This year's shortlist has all the originality, innovation, quality of writing and potential durability that we are looking for. It will confirm the Walter Scott Prize's reputation as being one of the most sought-after English language book prizes."Historical fiction is a genre which allows as wide and fascinating a range of writing as fiction itself."

The winner will be announced on Saturday 18 June at the Borders Book Festival.