yay! 
Booker Prize Finalists Are Named
By Sarah Lyall
September 22, 2004
New York Times - you should always post entire articles from the NY Times into your blog (even tho technically it's wrong, but who's watching? 
), coz sometimes you forget your login name and password, and then what're you left to do? 
A novel about South Africa's struggles to reconcile with its past, a fictionalization of Henry James's life, a tale spanning the centuries and told through a dizzying array of distinct voices, an account of the ravages of alcoholism in a family, a novel about a British tattoo artist living in Coney Island, and the story of a man caught up in the headiness of 1980's London - these are the books on the 2004 Man Booker Prize shortlist, which was announced in London on Tuesday.
In presenting the shortlist, Chris Smith, the chairman of the judges' panel, praised the high quality of the writing and use of imagery in all six books. The list was winnowed down from a preliminary longlist of 22 semifinalists selected from a total of 132 entries. Mr. Smith was not flattering about the general caliber of the entrants. "I have to say that of the books submitted, quite a number were not very good," he said. The winner of the prize, which is awarded annually to a novel written by a British or Commonwealth writer, receives £52,500 (about $94,000); the runners-up receive £2,500 (about $4,500) each. Every year there are surprises and minor controversies surrounding the judging, and this time the complaints had to do with novels left off the longlist of semifinalists, which included an unusually high number of relative unknowns.
Among those who did not make the early cut were new books by V. S. Naipaul, David Lodge and Louis de Bernières. But Mr. Smith said that their work did not stand up to competitive scrutiny. The winner will be announced on Oct. 19. Among bookies, who are taking bets on the competition, David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," a book told by six narrators from six eras, is the favorite at Ladbrokes, with even odds.
It is on the shortlist, along with "The Line of Beauty," Alan Hollinghurst's look at the opulent world of 1980's London; "The Master,'' Colm Toibin's fictionalization of the agonized life of Henry James; "Bitter Fruit," set in modern-day South Africa, by Achmat Dangor; Sarah Hall's "Electric Michelangelo," whose protagonist is a Coney Island tattoo artist; and "I'll Go to Bed at Noon," about the long tentacles of alcoholism, by Gerard Woodward.
[ NY Times ]
[ booker prize ]
