Mantel is favourite to win Man Booker

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It’s a close call for Booker Prize in 2012 with bookies favouring Hilary Mantel to win the prestigious award for her novel Bring Up The Bodies.
Mantel, who won the Booker Prize in 2009 for the first part of her Tudor trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall, is being enthusiastically backed by bookmakers to become the first British author to win a Booker double.
Australian writer Peter Carey has won the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2001 for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, respectively. Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee has also won the Booker Prize twice — for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999.
In fact, Coetzee lost a chance of making Booker history by winning it the third time when his novel Summertime lost out to Wolf Hall in 2009. William Hill has put Mantel as a clear favourite to win the award, which is being announced at a dinner at the Guildhall in London on Tuesday night.
“First Will Self was favourite, then Hilary Mantel edged into the lead, then punters couldn’t split them and now we are making Hilary a very narrow favourite. I don’t envy the judges having to split them, it could be the most difficult decision yet,” William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe said. Ladbrokes has placed Self as the favourite at 6/4, ahead of Mantel at 9/4. Indian poet-writer Jeet Thayil, shortlisted for his debut novel Narcopolis, who has won over the critics is however, trailing the bookmakers’ list of likely winners. Kerala-born 53-year-old Thayil, who has published four collections of poetry and lives in New Delhi, has the least chances of winning the prize, according to the bookmakers. William Hill has given him 10/1 odds and Ladbrokes 12/1 odds of winning the prize, which was last won by an Indian in 2008, when Aravind Adiga won the prize for his debut novel The White Tiger. 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 Stevens, the star of hit British television series Downton Abbey; broadcaster and historian Amanda Foreman and academic Dinah Birch.