Thursday, September 11, 2014

Mukherjee is new Man Booker favourite

 David Mitchell fails to make the cut

Art, war and internet dominate as Neel Mukherjee tipped as favourite to win first Man Booker prize to allow all nationalities
Writer Neel Mukherjee
Neel Mukherjee is the 2-1 favourite for The Lives of Others, which tells the story of a once-wealthy Kolkata family in decline. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Fears that British and Commonwealth writers would struggle to get a look in for the newly expanded Man Booker prize appeared unfounded on Tuesday with the publication of a 2014 shortlist that includes three British novelists in Howard Jacobson, Ali Smith and Neel Mukherjee but not David Mitchell, who had been many people's favourite.

The list also included two Americans and one Australian, while two female writers were chosen from three who were on the longlist.
But chairman of this year's judges, the philosopher AC Grayling, said the relatively balanced shortlist had not been the result of box-ticking.
"There is no question of tokenism here; we didn't say 'let's have a couple of Commonwealth, a couple of women, a couple of this, a couple of that' – that is simply not the way you go about judging a literary prize," he said.

The bookmakers Ladbrokes installed Mukherjee as 2-1 favourite for The Lives of Others, which tells the story of a once-wealthy Kolkata family in decline.
A victory for Jacobson would make him the first British man to win twice, after picking up the prize in 2010, and he is shortlisted for J, a disturbing, dystopian imagining of a future after an assumed genocidal event. Smith, meanwhile, is shortlisted for the third time for How to be Both, a book with two interconnected stories published in random order.
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