The 34-year-old Indian writer, Aravind Adiga, who is the youngest novelist to be short listed, has been nominated for his debut novel ’The White Tiger’ while Amitav Ghosh has been shortlisted for his novel ’Sea of Poppies’.

British writers, Linda Grant and Philip Hensher, who was once a Booker judge, have been nominated for ’The Clothes on Their Backs’ and ’The Northern Clemency’ respectively. Novelist Sebastian Barry has been nominated for ’The Secret Scripture’ and Steve Toltz for his book ’A Fraction of the Whole’. According to the Michael Portillo, the chair of the judges, these novels are immensely readable as each of these is an extraordinary example of imagination and narration.

The first Indian citizen to ever win the prestigious booker prize was Arundhati Roy for the novel ’The God of Small Things’. Kiran Desai, a 34-year-old writer of Indian origin won the Man Booker Prize for ’The Inheritance of Loss’ in addition to another Indian origin writer, Salman Rushdie’s novel ’Midnight’s Children’, which was named as the greatest Booker Prize winner ever in July1981, in an award marking 40 years of the prize.

Earlier this year, some 13 books were on the long list with Salman Rushdie’s last novel ’The Enchantress of Florence’ among the bookmakers’ favourites.

The winner receives 50,000 pounds (88,000 dollars, 62,000 Euros) while all the shortlisted authors receive 2,500 pounds and a designer bound edition of their novel. A Man Booker Prize nomination guarantees worldwide readership and an increase in book sales. A total of 41 books have won the prize since it was launched in 1969. The award was shared in 1974 and 1992. The contenders should have had the book originally written in English and published in the past year. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in London’s Guildhall on October 14.