Man Booker Prize 2008 shortlist announced

Today was the day that the Man Booker Dozen got reduced to its shortlist of six and those six (with Booker Prize page links) are as follows:

• The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
• The Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry          
• Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh
• The Clothes on Their Backs – Linda Grant                
• The Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher            
• A Fraction of the Whole – Steve Toltz

The hot news seems to be the failure of hot favourite, and twice Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie to make the final cut, with his fable-based novel The Enchantress of Florence; a fact that the Guardian really seems to be dwelling on (gotta love their snapshot of a dejected Rushdie ))

The overall winner will be announced at a big ‘slap up’ on October 14th in London, so we’ll all have to wait with bated breath until then.

Additional links of interest
When I originally reported on the announcement of the long list I posted a number of related links. Following are the ones pertaining to the shortlist:

Aravind Adiga Interview – A BookBrowse.com interview with the author of the White Tiger (which also includes links to extracts from the book).
The Secret Scripture Review – Guardian review of Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture.
Amitav Ghosh reads from Sea of Poppies – A YouTube hosted video of Amitav Ghosh reading from Sea of Poppies (part 2 can be found HERE).
Northern Clemency Review - The Telegraph’s review of Philip Hensher’s Northern Clemency.
Steve Tolz’s Website – The website of the author of A Fraction of the Whole (which includes links to reviews of the book)