A week after the Man Booker longlist was announced, who's sitting pretty at the top of the bookies' lists? It's that nice man David Mitchell, who William Hill has installed as 9/2 favourite – though after reaching the shortlist and no further for both number9dream and Cloud Atlas, he won't be putting up the bunting yet. In fact, when he came in to talk to us on the podcast earlier this year, the mere suggestion that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – 500 pages of postcolonial, historical fiction with a complicated love story at its heart – was a very Bookerable book was enough to set him groaning. Talk of the Booker prize is apparently verboten in the Mitchell household.
Right up next to him, also at 9/2, is a rather more surprising choice, given the Booker's usual aversion to anything remotely tricksy or experimental: Tom McCarthy. But C has certainly made a bit of a splash, and perhaps William Hill is also expecting things to be a little more difficult for historical fiction this year, after Wolf Hall's resounding victory.
It's early days yet, but if you're thinking of getting a bet in, you might want to take a look at our extracts. We've assembled a set of short tasters from all 13 books on the list, from Emma Donoghue's Room to Alan Warner's The Stars in the Bright Sky, so have the bookies got it right? Cast your eye over the runners and the riders, and let us know if you've switched horses.
