Australian writer Peter Carey has a chance of making Booker history on Tuesday night, but British author Tom McCarthy is the sweeping favourite of British bookies to win the prize for his novel C.
Carey, who has been nominated for his latest novel, Parrot and Oliver in America, has already won the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2001 for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, respectively.
If popular sentiment rules like 2009 when bookie favourite Hilary Mantel won the award for her novel Wolf Hall, then will be end up like Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee who missed his chance last year to make Booker history. Coetzee has also won the Booker Prize twice — for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999 and he lost to Mantel in 2009.
The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on Tuesday night. An estimated £1 million is staked annually in Britain on the outcome of literary awards and prizes and Booker attracts the maximum bets.
London-born McCarthy is expected by bookmakers to sweep aside all opposition. “Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was a red hot favourite at 10/11 last year — the first ever odds-on winner and the heaviest backed Booker book ever,” said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe.
“But a similar gamble has seen C’s odds collapse to 8/11 favourite this week and the industry is facing up to a second successive six-figure clobbering should the gamble proved to be an inspired one. I do not believe there has been any leak ahead of the judges’ deliberations but a real betting bandwagon has built up around the book with three-figure bets galore being gambled on it,” he added on Monday.
Despite Carey’s chance to make literary history, bookmakers have relegated him to the fourth favourite, giving him no chance of winning the prize.
So popular has been McCarthy with the betting public that bookmaker Ladbrokes suspended market on the winner of the Booker Prize. “The money for Tom McCarthy has set alarm bells ringing. He was the only name being backed and the other candidates are friendless. We’ve decided to take a breather after a frenzied 24 hours,” David Williams of Ladbrokes said.
McCarthy had 7/1 odds in the summer and 2/1 at the start of last week, his odds collapsed to 4/6 before Ladbrokes stopped betting on the category.
Although no Indian author made the 13-book longlist this year, the six-book shortlist revealed on Tuesday is a Commonwealth list with authors from Australia, South Africa, Britain and Ireland.