With just over a week (August 28, 2011) until the shortlist is announced, D. J. Taylor’s Derby Day is favourite to win the Man Booker Prize in 2011. Ladbrokes, a leading UK online bookmaker, currently has Derby Day at odds of 4 to 1.
When the longlist of 13 was announced on 26 July, The Guardian’s Lindesay Irvine speculated that Alan Hollinghurst would almost certainly become the bookmakers' favourite. But, as of today, Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child is currently sitting in equal third on the list with odds of 6 to 1. Sharing third place is Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending.
Sitting in second place is Stephen Kelman and Pigeon English. Kelman is one of four debut writers to make the Booker longlist in 2011. Kelman’s novel has a somewhat fraught path to publication. It was almost lost in a literary agent’s slush pile, before being discovered and becoming the subject of a bidding war, eventually to be published by Bloomsbury. The other debut novelists on the list are A. D. Miller, Yvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness.
The Man Booker Prize 2011 Bookmakers’ Odds
A total of 138 books were considered by the Man Booker Prize judges in 2011, 131 of which were entered by publishers with a further seven ‘called in’ by the judges. Ladbrokes' odds for the 13 novels in contention currently are:
- D.J. Taylor, Derby Day – 4 to 1
- Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English – 5 to 1
- Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child – 6 to 1
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending – 6 to 1
- Sebastian Barry, On Canaan's Side – 7 to 1
- Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie – 8 to 1
- Yvvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats – 10 to 1
- Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days – 14 to 1
- Alison Pick, Far to Go – 14 to 1
- Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues – 14 to 1
- Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers – 14 to 1
- A.D. Miller, Snowdrops – 16 to 1
- Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb – 16 to 1
The 13 books on the Man Booker Prize longlist, also known as the Booker dozen, will be whittled down to a shortlist of six on the September 6. The winner, who will receive a prize of £50,000, will be announced on October 18. Aside from the winner's cheque and the prestige, the real prize for the winner of the Booker is the almost certain boost in sales.
The conversion from media attention to sales in the bookshop, of course, varies from year to year and title to title, but a significant boost is almost certainly guaranteed. The ‘biggest winner’ from the Man Booker winners’ platform is almost certainly Yann Martel. Since winning the Booker Prize in 2002, Martel’s The Life of Pi has racked up sales of over 1.3 million copies.
D. J. Taylor’s Derby Day – Man Booker Prize Favourite 2011
Derby Day, D. J. Taylor’s second foray into Victorian mystery, has been described as ’a pitch-perfect pastiche of a Victorian novel with subtle post-modern cornicing in the form of chapter epigraphs from contemporary publications and allusions to Thackeray, Collins, et al.’
Derby Day continues the tradition of Taylor's 2006 novel Kept and shares a character, a detective, with the earlier work. Taylor is also a noted critic and biographer. He won the Whitbread Biography Award in 2003 for his biography of George Orwell.
In contrast to the odds offered by Ladbrokes, bookmaker William Hill has Julian Barnes as the favourite to win the 2011 Man Booker Prize.
Cate Allan - Cate Allan is a Melbourne-based writer and editor. She has published widely on language, travel and the arts.
Join the Conversation