Jacobson favourite for Booker prize

Author Howard Jacobson was today picked out as an early favourite to win this year’s Booker Prize.

Jacobson, nominated for his humorous novel Who’s Sorry Now?, was one of 20 writers named on a list announced by judges for the prestigious literary award.

Other nominees for the prize include Whitbread winner Zadie Smith for The Autograph Man, and William Boyd for Any Human Heart.

According to bookmakers, Jacobson, who has never received a Booker nomination before, was an early favourite to take the prize at odds of 4/1.

Smith, who scooped the 2001 Whitbread first novel prize for White Teeth, and Boyd, who won the Sunday Express Book of the Year for The Blue Afternoon in 1993, were named joint second favourite at 5/1.

Also on the long list for the 2002 award was previous Booker winner Anita Brookner, who scooped the prize in 1984 for Hotel du Lac.

Canadian Carol Smith, who was shortlisted for the Booker and won the Pulitzer Prize, both in 1993, for The Stone Diaries, was also in the running.

The Booker Prize, now in its 34th year, is awarded to the best full length novel of the year and is open to authors from Britain, the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland.

This year’s long list was chosen from a total of 130 entries. Of those, 116 were submitted and the remaining 14 were either from the call-in list or were requested by the judges.

The shortlist will be announced on September 24 and the overall winner will be named at a ceremony in London, to be broadcast live on BBC Two.

Here is the full long list for the 2002 Man Booker Prize:

:: Dannie Abse - The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds & Dr Glass (Robson Books)

:: John Banville - Shroud (Picador)

:: Joan Barfoot - Critical Injuries (Women’s Press)

:: William Boyd - Any Human Heart (Hamish Hamilton)

:: Anita Brookner - The Next Big Thing (Viking)

:: Robert Edric - Peacetime (Doubleday)

:: Michael Frayn - Spies (Faber and Faber)

:: Linda Grant - Still Here (Bloomsbury)

:: Philip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire (UHP)

:: Howard Jacobson - Who’s Sorry Now? (Jonathan Cape)

:: Yann Martel - Life of Pi (Canongate)

:: Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (Bloomsbury)

:: Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters (Faber and Faber)

:: Will Self - Dorian (Viking)

:: Carol Shields - Unless (4th Estate)

:: Zadie Smith - The Autograph Man (Hamish Hamilton)

:: Colin Thubron - To The Last City (Chatto & Windus)

:: William Trevor - The Story of Lucy Gault (Viking)

:: Sarah Waters - Fingersmith (Virago)

:: Tim Winton - Dirt Music (Picador)