Superprize for Writing Novels

This year the bookish people who run the Man Booker prize will celebrate the award's 40th anniversary with a The Best of the Booker award to "honour the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969." The same type of award was given on the organization's 25th anniversary, but this time the public will be able to help choose from a shortlist of six chosen by a panel from the 41 contenders. The regular Booker prize is 50,000 pounds. The winner of the Best Booker only gets a trophy, I guess because the author already got the loot the first time around.

According to The Times online, bookies give authors these odds of winning:

• 4-1 Yann Martel – The Life of Pi (2002)

• 5-1 Salman Rushdie – Midnight's Children (1981)
  

• 7-1 Michael Ondaatje – The English Patient (1992)

• 8-1 Ben Okri – The Famished Road (1991); Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (1997); Ian McEwan – Amsterdam (1998)

• 10-1 J. M. Coetzee – Disgrace (1999); Anne Enright – The Gathering (2007)

If nothing else, this probably makes a good reading list for aspiring novelists.