Indian poet-writer Jeet Thayil’s debut novel Narcopolis was among the books chosen for the six-book shortlist for the Booker Prize in London on Tuesday.
Fifty-three-year-old Thayil was born in Kerala, who has published four collections of poetry, lives in New Delhi. This is the first time since 2008, when Aravind Adiga won the prize for his debut novel The White Tiger, that an Indian author has reached the shortlist for the Boo-ker Prize. Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel, 60, who won the award for her book Wolf Hall in 2009, also made the shortlist for her novel, Bring Up the Bodies, the critically-acclaimed sequel to Wolf Hall. Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng has made the shortlist for his novel The Garden of Evening Mists. British writer Will Self, shortlisted for Umbrella, has been made the frontrunner to win the prize by bookies. “A number of clients have opened accounts purely to bet on Will Self, whose odds have collapsed from an original 5/1,” William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said on Tuesday.
William Hill is giving Londoner Will Self 7/4 odds of being the favourite to win the prize followed by Hilary Mantel with 2/1 chances of winning the prize for the second time. Cape Town-based Tan Twang Eng, 39, is third favourite with 5/1, followed by Deborah Levy (Swimming Home) and Alison Moore (The Lighthouse) at 7/1 and lastly Jeet Thayil at 10/1.
The six-book shortlist was chosen by a five-member jury, headed by Times Literary Supplement editor Sir Peter Stothard. The judges include Indian-origin academic Bharat Tandon, who is an expert on Jane Austen; Dan Ste-vens, the star of hit British television series Downton Abbey among others. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on October 16 in London.