2008 Man Booker Prize Shortlist

The shortlisted titles for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, which "promotes the finest in fiction," are:
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga;
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry;
Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh;
The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant;
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher;
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
This year the judges are Michael Portillo, former MP and cabinet minister; Alex Clark, editor of Granta; Louise Doughty, novelist; James Heneage, founder of Ottakar's bookshops; and Hardeep Singh Kohli, TV and radio broadcaster. In a statement, Portillo, the jury chair, called the shortlisted novels "intensely readable, each of them an extraordinary example of imagination and narrative. These fine page-turning stories nonetheless raise highly thought-provoking ideas and issues. These books are in every case both ambitious and approachable." Two of the titles--A Fraction of the Whole and The White Tiger--are first novels. This year some of the talk about the finalists focused on the omission of several major titles, particularly Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. The Guardian quoted Portillo as saying, "In the opinion of [the judges] taken together, Salman Rushdie's was not one of the top six books for us. We didn't have a huge debate about it." The winning title will be chosen and announced Tuesday, October 14.