Here is a UK slant on the Commonwealth Writers Prize shortlists:

Rushdie and Hensher face off for Commonwealth prize
Alison Flood writing in guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 February 2009

Salman Rushdie: in the running for the Commonwealth prize. Photographer: Murdo Macleod

Salman Rushdie and Philip Hensher are to go head to head for the second time in six months after both authors made it onto the regional shortlist for the Commonwealth writers' prize.

Last year Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence stalled at the Booker longlist stage, while Hensher's portrait of Thatcherite Britain, The Northern Clemency, garnered a place in the final Booker six, eventually losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

The other titles shortlisted for the £1,000 best book from Europe and south Asia award are an eclectic mix, from Chris Cleave's The Other Hand, the story of a 16-year-old Nigerian girl, to Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of migrant short stories Unaccustomed Earth. David Lodge's Deaf Sentence, about a retired university professor, and Indian author
Shashi Deshpande's depiction of an affair without a future, In The Country of Deceit, complete the line-up.

For Alison Flood's full story link here.