The Times to host Lost Man Booker debate

Erica Wagner will discuss six shortlisted titles

23 March 2010

The Times will be hosting a live debate this Friday 26 March at midday on who should win the Lost Man Booker Prize.

The shortlist of six titles was announced Thursday 25 March at an event at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.

The six books are:

• The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden (Virago)
• Troubles by J G Farrell (Phoenix)
• The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard (Virago)
• Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault (Arrow)
• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark (Penguin)
• The Vivisector by Patrick White (Vintage)

Erica Wagner, Literary Editor of The Times, will host this special Culture Clinic live debate where Times Online users can submit their thoughts on who should win the prize.

Readers can then cast their vote here on the Man Booker Prize website.

The Lost Man Booker is a one-off prize to honour the books which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970. In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became - as it is today - a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. As a result a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net.

The Lost Man Booker Prize judges are ITN newsreader Katie Derham, poet and novelist Tobias Hill and journalist and critic Rachel Cooke. 

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest