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Martel is Booker favourite
LONDON, England -- Six authors are vying for the prestigious Booker literary prize on Tuesday with the bookies' favourite being a story about a man and tiger surviving a shipwreck. Three Canadians, one Irishman, an Australian and a Welsh woman are competing for the award and a £50,000 ($77,500) prize. The five-judge panel whittled away at a total of 130 entries to create a list of 20 books, which was then reduced to six. Spanish-born Yann Martel, who now lives in Canada, is the bookmakers' hottest favourite in the competition's 33-year history, at evens, after he was inadvertently named as winner on a dummy Web site last week. Competition organisers said a Web page had been mocked up for each of the six different outcomes and that one had been transmitted by mistake, but it did not stop punters placing bets. Martel's book, "Life of Pi," is about an Indian boy who survives a 227-day desperate journey across the Pacific with a tiger after their boat is shipwrecked. (Full Story) Other contenders for the award, to be announced at the British Museum in London on Tuesday, include fellow Canadians Carol Shields, who was born in the U.S., and is in contention with "Unless," and Indian-born Rohinton Mistry's "Family Matters." Australia is represented by Tim Winton's "Dirt Music" while Ireland has William Trevor's "The Story of Lucy Gault," and Wales has Sarah Waters' "Fingersmith." The award, which has been renamed Man Booker after financial services conglomerate Man Group announced a five-year sponsorship deal, is open to English-language novelists from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. Its aim is to promote good writing, to raise the stature of the author and to encourage an interest in contemporary quality fiction. Big name authors who were on the long-list of 20 but who missed out on a final six place included Zadie Smith's new book "The Autograph Man" and Will Self's "Dorian."
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