Words At Large

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the Man Booker Prize is inviting people to vote for their favourite novel out of a shortlist of six past winners. The poll for the Best of the Booker Prize is open until noon on July 8, 2008.

According to one of the world’s leading bookmakers, William Hill, the odds favour Salman Rushdie, Pat Barker and Peter Carey. This week’s Words at Large podcast features interviews with all three.

The six books were selected by a jury chaired by biographer Victoria Glendinning:

Pat Barker, The Ghost Road (Booker winner in 1995, Penguin)
Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988, Faber And Faber)
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1999, Vintage)
J.G. Farrell, The Seige of Krishnapur (1973, New York Review Of Books)
Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist (1974, Penguin)
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981, Vintage Canada)

It seems appropriate that Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, a novel about gamblers, has a good shot at the prize. Shelagh Rogers spoke to Australian Peter Carey about Oscar and Lucinda in 1988.

Paul Kennedy spoke to English writer Pat Barker in 1996 just after she won the Booker Prize for The Ghost Road. They spoke about the many ways that winning the award affected her.

The current favourite to win is Midnight’s Children. The late Peter Gzowski spoke to Salman Rushdie in 1983 about the many prizes showered on the author’s second novel. Besides the Booker, Midnight’s Children won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award. In 1993, it was chosen as the Booker of the Bookers, the best novel to have won the award in its first 25 years.

Will Rushdie score a hat trick? The winning book will be announced on July 10 at the London Literature Festival.

Listen to the Words at Large podcast here:

Vote for the Best of the Booker here.