Untitled Books

The judging panel for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction has, having considered 132 books in total, announced its longlist for this year's prize.

The list is, according to the panel's chair James Naughtie, 'one of the strongest ... in recent memory.' Among the 13 authors are two former winners of the prize, JM Coetzee and AS Byatt, another four who have got at least this far before, and three debut novelists.

It represents, Naughtie continues, 'a span of styles and themes that make this an outstandingly rich fictional mix.'

Naughtie and his four fellow judges, comedian Sue Perkins, biographer Lucasta Miller, academic Professor John Mullan and the Sunday Telegraph's literary editor Michael Prodger, will announce a shortlist of six in September. The winner of the £50,000 prize, awarded to the single best novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland, will then be announced at the Guildhall in London on 6th October.

The full longlist consists of:
AS Byatt, The Children's Book
JM Coetzee, Summertime
Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
Sarah Hall, How to Paint a Dead Man
Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness
James Lever, Me Cheeta
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer, The Glass Room
Ed O'Loughlin, Not Untrue & Not Unkind
James Scudamore, Heliopolis
Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
William Trevor, Love and Summer
Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

In an intriguing aside to the announcement, bookmakers William Hill had one of its own. 95% of all bets placed so far have been on Hilary Mantel and Wolf Hall. They have, they say, never seen a betting pattern like it. Odds on Mantel winning the notoriously difficult-to-predict prize have been cut to 2/1. Graham Sharpe, spokesman for William Hill, said that 'it was almost like an unspoken psychic rumour had gone round.'