Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Looking to Tonight's Booker Winner

PublishersLunch
Julian Barnes is in the running for the Booker Prize for the fourth time, this year for THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, and he heads into tonight's awards ceremony as the odds-on favorite. Which is often not a good thing. As our handy chart below shows, over the past eight years the bettor's choice has only won once. (We stopped at 2004, since 2003 was the year that the Booker web site at least appeared to post Yann Martel's victory a week ahead of the ceremony.) The announcement is due at 4:48 Eastern (US) time today.
Year
Favorite
Winner
2010
Tom McCarthy,
C
Howard Jacobson,
The Finkler Question
2009
Hilary Mantel,
Wolf Hall 
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
(in a 3-2 vote)
2008
Sebastian Barry,
The Secret Scripture
Aravind Adiga,
The White Tiger
2007
Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
Anne Enright,
The Gathering
2006
Sarah Waters,
The Night Watch
Kiran Desai,
The Inheritance of Loss
2005
Kazuo Ishiguro,
Never Let Me Go
John Banville, The Sea
2004
David Mitchell,
Cloud Atlas
Allan Hollinghurst,
The Line of Beauty
2003
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
DBC Pierre,
Vernon God Little

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