Lost Man Booker Prize shortlist announced

The shortlist for The Lost Man Booker Prize - a one-off prize to honour the books published in 1970 that were not eligible for consideration for the Booker Prize - has been announced. The shortlist was announced at a special event at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. The six books are:

* The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden (Virago)
* Troubles by J G Farrell (Phoenix)
* The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard (Virago)
* Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault (Arrow)
* The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark (Penguin)
* The Vivisector by Patrick White (Vintage)

The shortlist was selected by a panel of three judges, all of whom were born in or around 1970. They are journalist and critic, Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader, Katie Derham and poet and novelist, Tobias Hill. They chose the six books from an original longlist of 21 eligible titles which are still in print and generally available today. The Lost Man Booker is the brainchild of Peter Straus, the honorary archivist to The Booker Prize Foundation. He realised that in 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became - as it is today - a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. At the same time the award moved from April to November and, as a result, a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net and was never considered for the prize