Best of the Booker

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the prize, the 40 past winners of the Booker Prize have been narrowed down to a shortlist of 6 from which the public are being asked to vote for the Best of the Booker. The criteria that the judges used to select the shortlist were that the books were the most likely to outlast the fashions that created them. Of the six shortlisted books, which span three decades, five deal more or less directly with postcolonial experience. Two of the books "The Siege of Krishnapur" by JG Farrell and "Midnight’s Children" by Salman Rushdie are set in India; "Oscar and Lucinda" by Peter Carey is set in Australia; South Africa is the setting for both "The Conservationist" by Nadine Gordimer and "Disgrace" by JM Coetzee; Pat Barker’s "Ghost Road" is set in First World War France and England. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is tipped by William Hill to win the prize at odds of 6/4, with Ghost Road at 3/1 and Oscar and Lucinda at 4/1. The result of the public vote will be announced on July 10th. You can vote on www.themanbookerprize.com.