Well, Mary Lawson’s The Other Side of the Bridge didn’t manage to make the jump from the Man Booker Prize longlist to the just-announced shortlist. But there is good news for a couple of Canadian publishers: three of the six shortlisted titles have been issued in separate Canadian editions, two of them – M.J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River – by HarperCollins Canada. The third Canadian-published title is Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (Penguin Canada).

The other three Booker nominees are Hisham Matar’s In the Country of Men (Viking), Edward St Aubyn’s Mother’s Milk (Picador), and – singled out in the early press reaction as the frontrunner – Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch (Virago).

In its coverage of the shortlist announcement, The Guardian reminds us that over in Britain, it’s all about the betting action. “Meanwhile, the relatively low profile of many of the shortlisted authors was good news for bookmakers. ‘We couldn’t have compiled a better short-list from a bookmaking point of view,’ said William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe. ‘Many of the well fancied runners like David Mitchell, Peter Carey, Barry Unsworth and Howard Jacobson have all fallen by the wayside and most punters have already lost their money.'”

Related links:
Click here for the official announcement
Click here for the Guardian story