Man Booker Prize Betting 2008

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, more commonly called the Booker Prize, is an annual literary award for the best novel written in the English language. The work must be an original work and written by a Commonwealth or Irish citizen. Each year the Booker Prize Foundation appoints a panel consisting of an author, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller, a librarian, and a chairperson. The chairperson for the 2008 prize is former MP and Cabinet Minister, Michael Portillo with Alex Clark, deputy editor of Granta, novelist, Louise Doughty, James Heneage, founder of Ottakar's bookshops and Hardeep Singh Kohli, TV and radio broadcaster making up the rest of the panel.

Free Bets For New Customers

Betting on the outcome of the judges’ deliberations is readily available with many online bookies offering odds on each book as well as free bets for new customers. You can find sites online which will help you to discover the best offers at the time and the right place for you. It’s easy to sign-up and most online betting sites have a proven track record of trustworthiness and reliability.

Competition Is Wide Open For The Booker Prize

In the arena of Awards Betting, the Booker Prize has often been criticised for its absurdly long initial list of books, this year there were 112 entries, making the task of reading and assessing them, in the time available, pretty much impossible. Online betting fans must be similarly bemused by such a number of books and it is only when the ‘longlist’ of thirteen books is produced, usually in July, that they can be properly weighed-up from a betting point of view. About a month before the judgement day of October 14th, the shortlist of six books is presented and, this year, the bookies were all shocked at the omission of what had been their favourites. Now, with the absence of Salman Rushdie and Joseph O’Neill, William Hill says the competition is wide open.

So, what have we got in the shortlist? Online betting sites have elevated Sebastian Barry to the position of favourite. His book ‘The Secret Scripture’ is a melodrama about Catholic priests locking old ladies up in mental hospitals producing, allegedly, an alternative, secret history of Ireland. Next up is Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh which is the first of a trilogy about the Opium Wars. A multicultural book with historic detail can’t be bad and it must be in with a strong chance. Steve Toltz’s ‘A Fraction of the Whole’ is a tale of father and son conciliation achieved in adventures spanning the globe while Linda Grant’s offering ‘The Clothes On Their Backs’ tells the story of the a young Jewish woman learning the real truth of her family history through a mysterious uncle, all set in 1970’s London. Philip Hensher provides us with ‘The Northern Clemency, set in Sheffield and offering a perspective on English life in the Thatcher era and finally, Aravind Adiga ‘The White Tiger’, the story of a dodgy but diamond geezer in modern India.

Online Betting Sites Offer Plenty Of Choice On The Man Booker Prize Betting

As you can imagine, putting a bunch of literary types together to decide which is the best book, when it’s largely subjective anyway, can lead to all manner of spats and fallings out. It’s not unusual for huffy panel members to denounce the other judges after the event and, far from detracting from the judging process; this all adds fun to what can be a fairly serious procedure.