Rushdie tipped for Best Booker
2008-07-10 10:26
London - Salman Rushdie is the hot favourite
to win the "Best of the Booker" award on Thursday which marks
the 40th anniversary of one of the world's most coveted literary
prizes.
The British author, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses
angered many Muslims and prompted death threats against him, was
the overwhelming 1-8 frontrunner with Midnight's Children,
which won the Booker Prize in 1981.
He was up against five other shortlisted authors including
Nobel Prize winners JM Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer.
Nick Weinberg of bookmakers Ladbrokes said Rushdie had
attracted 90% of all wagers on the "Best of the Booker"
award, possibly reflecting expectations that the public vote
would go to the most recognisable of six eligible authors.
"Arts awards are, as a general rule, tough to predict and
it's rare that one selection is backed to the exclusion of the
rest," Weinberg said. "But that's exactly what's happened here."
'Magical realist style'
Midnight's Children, an example of Rushdie's magical
realist style, follows Saleem Sinai who is born on the stroke of
midnight on the day of India's independence in 1947 and whose
life loosely parallels the fortunes of his nascent country.
Rusdhie was up against Pat Barker (The Ghost Road), Peter
Carey (Oscar and Lucinda), Coetzee (Disgrace), JG Farrell (The
Siege of Krishnapur) and Gordimer (The Conservationist).
He won the 25th anniversary version of the "Best of the
Booker" prize in 1993.
Coetzee and Carey are the only two authors to have won the
Booker Prize twice.
The Booker rewards the best novel each year
by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country.
The winner of the "Best of the Booker" will be announced as
part of the London Literature Festival on Thursday.