Carey favourite to win the Man Booker International Prize

Australian novelist is bookies’ favourite

17 April 2009

Australian Peter Carey, author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, for which he was twice awarded a Man Booker Prize for Fiction, is favourite to win the Man Booker International Prize 2009, with odds of 6/1 (William Hill) and 5/1 (Ladbrokes). 

He is closely followed by Czech author, Arnošt Lustig, who has odds of 7/1 (William Hill) and 6/1 (Ladbrokes). Man Booker Prize for Fiction winner, V.S. Naipaul, has odds of 8/1 from William Hill.

UK author James Kelman, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic are given an outside chance at 20/1 (William Hill).

The judges' decision will be announced on Wednesday 27 May and the award ceremony will take place at Trinity College, Dublin on Thursday 25 June 2009.

The judging panel for this year's Man Booker International Prize is: Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician; and writer, film script writer and essayist, Andrey Kurkov.

The launch of the Man Booker International Prize was first announced in June 2004 and recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction.  Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize is awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.  In addition, there is a separate prize for translation and, if applicable, the winner can choose a translator of his or her work into English to receive a prize of £15,000.

The winner is chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel; there are no submissions from publishers.  Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, won the 2007 prize and Albanian writer, Ismail Kadaré, won the inaugural prize in 2005 and went on to gain worldwide recognition for his work.

Full press release here

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest