Booker International Prize

Nominees for the Man Booker International Prize:

• Margaret Atwood (Canada)
• Saul Bellow (Canada)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
• Gunter Grass (Germany)
• Ismail Kadare (Albania)
• Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
• Stanislaw Lem (Poland)
• Doris Lessing (UK)
• Ian McEwan (UK)
• Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
• Tomas Eloy Martinez (Argentina)
• Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
• Cynthia Ozick (US)
• Philip Roth (US)
• Muriel Spark (UK)
• Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
• John Updike (US)
• Abraham B Yehoshua (Israel)

The new £60,000 award is open to writers of all nationalities who write in English or are widely translated.

The prize commends an author for their body of work instead of one book.

The prize, which will be awarded in London in June, will be given once every two years.

It will reward an author - who must be living - for "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage". An author can only win once.

The international award was started in response to criticisms that the Booker Prize is only open to British and Commonwealth authors.

(via Bookslut)

UPDATE: Handicapping the Field: A Punter's Guide
Saul Bellow and Gabriel Garcia Marquez lead the pack at 5:1.
Stanislaw Lem has 30:1 odds.

tags: literature, Booker Prize, Stanislaw Lem