UPDATE: Former journalist Aravind Adiga has won the Man Booker Prize, for "The White Tiger," taking home the £50,000 purse. Head judge Michael Portillo said, "In many ways it was the perfect book." Adiga (a former SAJAer in NYC who now lives in Mumbai) is only the fourth person to win with their first book, after Arundhati Roy, Keri Hulme and DBC Pierre. At 33, he's one of the youngest winners in the 40 years of the contest. From the official press release.
Adiga, who has wanted to be a novelist since he was a boy, was born in Madras and now lives in Mumbai. He becomes the fifth Indian author to win the prize, joining VS Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai who won the prize in 1971, 1981, 1997 and 2006 respectively. In addition, The White Tiger is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity.
More coverage at AP, Guardian, BBC and Bloomberg.
Listen to a June 2008 SAJA webcast with Adiga as he discusses his novel. Here's an interview that Sandip Roy did with Adiga in September 2008.
Listen to a June 2008 
At 7:45 pm in London tonight (that's 2:45 pm in NYC), the 2008 Man Booker Prize ceremony will take place. Among the six shortlisted books are two by writers with SAJA connections. We will update this post with the winners when they are announced. It's the prize's 40th anniversary.
Amitav Ghosh (top right), with "Sea of Poppies" has been a long time SAJA friend and has appeared at numerous SAJA events over the year. CONTACT: via publicist Sarita Varma in NYC: sarita.varma[at]fsgbooks.com
Aravind Adiga (top left), with "The White Tiger" was a SAJA member in NYC when he was with Time - before moving to Mumbai to become a fiction writer (listen to a recent webcast with Adiga as he discusses his novel). Post your comments below and we will make sure he sees them.
The full shortlist press release is below. See Ultrabrown's coverage of all things Booker (always good desi book stuff by UB's Manish Vij). See Neel Mukherjee's post on the Guardian about Booker and listmania.
Post your comments, please.
Earlier on SAJAforum:
From Publishers Lunch:
"The naming of the Booker Prize winner tonight in London should spark
some activity tomorrow at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is an unusual
year, though, with low sales for all six shortlisted titles. All
together, the six books have recorded lifetime sales of 32,342 copies
via Nielsen Bookscan. Only Linda Grant's The Clothes on Their Backs
is available in paperback, and that book has sold the most of the
six. Bookmakers Ladbrokes has Sebastian Barry's THE SECRET SCRIPTURE
as their 2-to-1 favorite, followed by Steve Toltz's A FRACTION OF THE
WHOLE at 6-to-1, but the bettor's favorite generally does not win the
Booker. (Barry has sold 2,091 copies so far.)"
[Note: Bookscan only includes about 70 percent of US sales, as I understand it - and Ghosh's book isn't being released in the U.S. till next week. Anyone have more info?]
The press release about the shortlist:
Six shortlisted titles announced
Man Booker 2008 Shortlist Announced
Two debut novelists ‘intensely readable ... page-turning stories' For the first time, extracts available to download onto mobiles Aravind Adiga, Sebastian Barry, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Grant, Philip Hensher and Steve Toltz are the six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2008, the English-speaking world's most important literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, Michael Portillo, at a press conference at Man Group plc offices in London today (Tuesday 9th September 2008).
The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 13 and are:
Author Title Publisher
Aravind Adiga The White Tiger Atlantic
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture Faber and Faber
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies John Murray
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs Virago
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency Fourth Estate
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole Hamish Hamilton
Michael Portillo, Chair of Judges, comments:
"The judges commend the six titles to readers with great enthusiasm. These novels are intensely readable, each of them an extraordinary example of imagination and narrative. These fine page-turning stories nonetheless raise highly thought-provoking ideas and issues. These books are in every case both ambitious and approachable."
The 2008 shortlist includes two first time novelists, Aravind Adiga and Steve Toltz. The six authors represent a broad geographical spread with two Indian authors, two English authors, an Australian author and an Irish author. The youngest on the list, at 34 years old, is Aravind Adiga. Sebastian Barry was shortlisted in 2005 for his novel A Long, Long Way, Linda Grant was longlisted in 2002 for her novel Still Here and Philip Hensher, once a Booker judge himself, was also longlisted in 2002 for his novel The Mulberry Empire.
The winner receives £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.
The judging panel for the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Michael Portillo, former MP and Cabinet Minister; Alex Clark, editor of Granta; Louise Doughty, novelist; James Heneage, founder of Ottakar's bookshops and Hardeep Singh Kohli, TV and radio broadcaster.
The winner will be announced on Tuesday 14th October at a dinner at the Guildhall, London. The announcement will be broadcast live on BBC One's 10 O'Clock News.
This year, the Man Booker Prize has exclusively partnered with mobile site GoSpoken to make extracts from the shortlisted books available to download free onto your mobile phone. They can either be read as text or listened to as audio. The extracts will be available from the moment the shortlist is announced by texting MBP to 60300. This is the first time that any book prize has used mobile technology to promote its shortlist.
On Monday 13th October, the eve of the winner announcement, the Southbank Centre in London will host an evening of readings and discussion with the 2008 shortlisted authors.
