'Best of the Booker' pits Rushdie against 40 pretenders

Fifteen years after Midnight's Children was named the Booker of Bookers, a new award celebrating the prize's 40th anniversary could see Salman Rushdie lose his crown

Michelle Pauli, Thursday February 21, 2008, guardian.co.uk

Still favourite after 15 years: Salman Rushdie signs books in Budapest. Photograph: Bela Szandelszky

Has there been a Booker to better Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children? That's the question the Man Booker prize are posing on the 40th anniversary of the literary award. In 1993 Rushdie won the Booker of Bookers on the prize's 25th anniversary but now, 15 years and 15 winners on, he is in danger of losing his crown.

The Best of the Booker is a one-off award which will, ultimately, be decided by the public. A panel of judges, including the broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and John Mullan, professor of English at UCL, and led by the biographer and critic Victoria Glendinning, will select a shortlist of six titles from the 41 novels that have won the prize. The discrepancy between the number of winners and the number of years arises from the fact that the award has twice been was shared: between Nadine Gordimer's The Conversationist and Stanley Middleton's Holiday in 1974, and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger in 1992. The panel will reveal their shortlist in May. The final decision will then be made via a public vote on the prize's website. The overall winner will be announced at the London Literary Festival at the Southbank Centre in July.

Winners since 1993 who might pose a threat to Rushdie include Margaret Atwood with The Blind Assassin (2000), Arundhati Roy with The God of Small Things (1997) and The Life of Pi by Yann Martell (2002). 2003's winner, Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, a controversial choice five years ago, may be popular with the judges but is unlikely to win the public's heart - a survey last year found it to be the book most British owners have failed to finish. Earlier titles that have stood the test of time along with Midnight's Children include Ben Okri's The Famished Road (1991), The English Patient (helped by its Oscar-winning film adaptation), and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (ditto).

Other celebrations to mark the anniversary include an exhibition at the V&A which tells the visual story of the prize over its 40 years, and The Booker at the Movies, a season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, featuring films from Booker prize-winning books and authors.

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