Previous Man Booker Prize winners DAME A.S. BYATT and J.M. COETZEE have been shortlisted for this year’s (09) top literary prize.
Byatt’s The Children’s Book and Coetzee’s Summertime are among the books selected.
Other contenders to land the $82,000 (GBP54,660) award, to be announced next month (Oct09), are Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, Adam Foulds’ The Quickening Maze, The Glass Room by Simon Mawer and Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger
Wolf Hall, a period drama set in the court of Henry VIII, is the bookmakers’ favourite to win.
If South African writer Coetzee wins, he’ll become the first three-time Booker Prize winner – he previously won the award in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K and again in 1999 for Disgrace.
Byatt claimed the 1990 Booker Prize for Possession: A Romance.