Ahead of the official announcement of the Man Booker shortlist at midday, the prize's PR firm has managed to let slip what will be the big Booker story: Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence has failed to make the cut. Rushdie won the prize in 1981 with Midnight's Children - which was this summer voted the best of the Bookers in a readers' poll.
Amitav Ghosh's The Sea of Poppies, which begins its multilayered narrative in India in the 1830s, has made the shortlist, as has Steve Toltz's debut A Fraction of the Whole, described as "a cross between A Confederacy of Dunces and Harry Mulisch's The Discovery of Heaven".
More news later.
