Author Salman Rushdie is the favourite to win the Best of the Booker award for his acclaimed novel Midnight's Children. (Rosie Greenway/Getty Images)The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is pitting six former winners against each other in a worldwide online competition to determine the “Best of the Booker." Who’s got the literary mojo to win over the reading public? Hint: They aren’t Canadian.

After nearly three months of consideration, a jury consisting of novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and John Mullan, professor of English at University College in London, culled the 41-novel-strong Booker backlist down to a half-dozen titles. Their choices are Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist, J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

They revealed their picks on May 12, after weeks of speculation as to who would make the shortlist for this first-time competition – a celebratory stunt marking the coveted Booker's 40th anniversary. The fact that not one Canadian made the list came as something of a surprise to many. Among them is Louise Dennys, executive publisher of Knopf Canada and executive vice-president of Random House of Canada. No stranger to the unpredictability of literary juries, Dennys says she was still “terribly disappointed (and cross!)” about the shunning of Canadian Booker winners Yann Martel, Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood.

Writing in an e-mail postscript following a recent phone chat, Dennys says she was surprised the jury ignored polls that asked the general public what they considered the best Bookers. Especially since the Best of the Booker will be decided by a public online vote. "Virtually every single one of [the polls] registered Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin among the frontrunners – along with Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey.”

Jury member Glendinning responds by describing the selection process as “nationality blind” and hype-immune. “It’s true that the bookies considered Yann Martel as a front-runner,” she notes in an e-mail, “maybe partly because of his recent success. But we never even discussed the media forecasts, which anyway changed all the time.”

Support for a Canadian contingent on the shortlist was initially strong. An AbeBooks customer survey declared Life of Pi the favourite, as did U.K. bookmakers William Hill, placing Martel’s odds at 4/1. (Unlike sporting events, which have a set form, literary odds are created by intuition mainly, explains Graham Sharpe, media director of William Hill in London.)

When asked about his status as a leading contender back in March, author Martel expressed both gratitude and discomfort. “The speculation is flattering to the extent that it’s nice to see literary prizes matter enough that people would want to bet on them," he said, via e-mail. "It’s not so nice in that writers are made to feel like racehorses, in competition with each other."

Contacted a day after the shortlist was announced, Martel was philosophical. “Forty years of Bookers, three readers – you have there the elements of highly variable results. I believe in the freedom to read. Those readers read and made their choice. I wish each of the finalists the best of luck.”

But Canadian authors shouldn’t feel too badly – they are in good company. Thirty-five other Booker Prize winners also didn’t make the cut, including Ian McEwan (Amsterdam), Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day), A.S. Byatt (Possession) and Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things ).

Of the six chosen novels, Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s “allegory of India,” is considered the book to beat. Those capricious William Hill bookies now place him in the lead with 6/4 odds. The Bombay-born, New York-based “Sir Salman” – he received a controversial KBE (Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 2007 – has already seen his 1981 novel triumph at the “Booker of Bookers” 25th anniversary competition in 1993.

South African writers Gordimer and Coetzee are tough competition, however. Each possess serious writer cred with Nobel Prizes for Literature: Gordimer won in 1991, the first woman to do so in 25 years, while Coetzee was honoured in 2003, when academy members praised his ability to capture “the divine spark in man” through the exploration of “weakness and defeat.” But surviving a death sentence, as Rushdie did after his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses provoked a fatwa from Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, rates just as high in the court of public opinion. Moreover, in a global competition, Rushdie’s got that all-important international currency: fame. Another notch in the heavyweight’s prize-winning belt: Time magazine named Midnight’s Children one of the “Best English Speaking Novels since 1923” in 1985.

Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, is among the Canadian Booker winners who didn't make the award's "Best of..." shortlist. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images) Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, the third and final installment in the Yorkshire-bred author’s revered First World War trilogy – her previous works, Regeneration and Stanley and Iris, made it on to the big screen – is a timely choice and one that puts her in good stead with bookies, too. Their odds place her as a close second to Rushdie. Barker's haunting investigations into the causes of violence have won her a passionate and loyal fan base that may vote in significant numbers.

Peter Carey, meanwhile, is Australia’s most celebrated writer. He possesses both popular and critical success, having won two Booker prizes (the other was for 2001's True History of the Kelly Gang) and seen Oscar and Lucinda turned into a film version starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett.

The long shot, at least according to odds makers, is J.G. Farrell’s The Seige of Krishnapur. But that status may not be entirely fair. Farrell’s eviscerating attack on the values of the colonial British in mid-19th century India won the Booker in 1973 and continues to crop up as the favourite former winner of some critics. Moreover Farrell, who drowned in 1979, is the only author on the shortlist to receive posthumous recognition, which is a testament to his status in the prize’s history. (Iris Murdoch and Kingsley Amis, also former winners, were not so recognized.)

Rushdie’s iconic status and literary cachet are tough to beat. But never underestimate the power of a literary fan base that may wish to provide a corrective to the media and the Best of the Booker’s jury. It’s not inconceivable that Coetzee or Barker may seize Rushdie’s crown.

Votes for the Best of the Booker can be cast on the Man Booker website until July 8, with the winner being announced July 10. That gives potential voters plenty of remedial reading time, says Ion Trewin, administrator of the Man Booker Prizes. “The intention is for there to be sufficient time between the announcement of the shortlist and the announcement of the winner for readers to read or reread the six short-listed titles before making their judgment,” he says via e-mail. (That equals roughly 2,250 pages in two months or 40 pages a day, by the way.)

Reactions to the Man Booker’s decision to open the competition up to the public have been mixed, with some decrying the event as pandering to populism. Quill & Quire editor Derek Weiler concedes the point in an e-mail, acknowledging that the public “already has a ‘vote’ – in the marketplace – and awards are theoretically a complement or corrective to that.” But Weiler’s not immune to the competition’s general appeal. "It all seems fun and harmless to me. And hey, won't it be interesting to know which winner (well, which one of the pre-selected shortlist of six) does resonate the most with readers?”

The Best of the Booker will be announced at the London Literature Festival on July 10. The winner will be awarded a custom-made trophy.

Flannery Dean is a Toronto writer.