LONDON (AP) — British novelist Andrew Miller and Indian creator Kiran Desai are oddsmakers’ favorites to win the Booker Prize for fiction at a ceremony in London on Monday.
They’re amongst six finalists for the coveted literary award, which carry a 50,000-pound ($66,000) payday and a giant increase to the winner’s gross sales and profile.
This 12 months’s winner, chosen from amongst 153 submitted novels, is being picked by a judging panel that features Irish author Roddy Doyle and “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker.
U.Okay. bookmaker William Hill on Friday put 15-8 odds on Miller taking the trophy for “The Land in Winter,” a story of affection and secrets and techniques centered on two {couples} in rural England in the course of the frigid winter of 1962-63. Miller, 64, was beforehand a Booker finalist in 2001 for “Oxygen.”
Desai, 54, was narrowly behind with 2-1 odds for “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” her first novel in 20 years. The virtually 700-page story of two younger Indians making their manner in america across the flip of the millennium is Desai’s third novel and her first since “The Inheritance of Loss,” which received the Booker Prize in 2006.
If she takes the prize, Desai would be the fifth two-time Booker winner, becoming a member of J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.
On-line bookmaker Betway additionally made Miller the front-runner, adopted by Desai.
Hungarian-British author David Szalay’s “Flesh,” which charts one man’s life throughout a long time with unadorned naturalism, additionally was attracting bets within the days earlier than the ceremony, in response to bookies.
The opposite contenders are Susan Choi’s twisty household saga “Flashlight”; Katie Kitamura’s story of performing and id, “Audition”; and midlife-crisis highway journey “The Rest of Our Lives” by Ben Markovits.
Doyle — a Booker winner himself in 1993 for “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha” – has mentioned that every one six books deal with large points, together with migration and sophistication, in a “brilliantly human” manner.
The Booker Prize was based in 1969 and has established a popularity for reworking writers’ careers. Its winners have included Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Samantha Harvey, who took the 2024 prize for area station story “Orbital.”
Initially open to English-language novels from the U.Okay., Eire and the Commonwealth, the prize expanded in 2014 to confess American writers. Worries about an American takeover have largely proved unfounded, although this 12 months’s six finalists embrace three U.S. writers — Choi, Kitamura and Markovits — and a fourth, Desai, who has lengthy lived in New York.
