Hunt for best Booker winner

WINNERS of the Man Booker prize are being pitted against each other to find the best novel in the last 50 years.

Illustrious authors including previous winners Dame Hilary Mantel, Graham Swift and Sir Salman Rushdie will be in contention to claim the Golden Man Booker.

All 51 winners of the literary award will be considered for the honour, created to mark the 50th anniversary of the prize.

It will span from the award’s inception in 1969, when Something To Answer For by PH Newby won, to last year’s winner Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders.

The prize is designed to discover which of the novelists has ‘stood the test of time, remaining relevant to readers today’.

Judges will select one title from each decade, which will be announced at the Hay Festival on May 26. The ‘Golden Five’ will then be put to a month-long public vote, with the overall winner announced at the Man Booker 50 Festival on July 8.

The judges are writer Robert McCrum, poet Lemn Sissay, novelist Kamila Shamsie, DJ Simon Mayo and poet Hollie McNish.