Praying for a little luck? ... Harry Mulisch. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Every literary prize usually tells you more about the judges, their tastes, prejudices, and often self-interest in terms of rewarding friends or returning favours than about the eventual laureate. The Nobel Prize on the other hand is often looking for a previously ignored country or one that is suddenly in the news for humanitarian or political reasons.
Looking at the 15 most celebrated candidates on the shortlist for the International Booker, I think I would go for a dark horse, Harry Mulisch. I've had my quarrels with him, but he is an excellent writer. Like Somerset Maugham he is better at the short story than the novel, but better known for the latter. Of his longer fiction I would single out his feminist novel Two Women, which some feminist shops once refused to stock until the false rumour was put about that Harry was really Harriet. The Attack is also an excellent novel despite being almost killed by an abysmal and inaccurate American translation. But the humour and insight with which Mulisch depicts human follies and obsessions is most apparent in his shorter work, and few modern writers can equal him there. Also, of all the eminent candidates, Mulisch is writer who the Booker Prize would most benefit.
