The Betfair Contrarian: Why Hilary Mantel won't win the Booker Prize

Booker Prize / The Betfair Contrarian / 04 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

"Shockingly, considering the Booker Prize is primarily a British award, just one UK entry has won in the last decade - Alan Hollinghurst in 2004 with The Line of Beauty. You have to go back even further to find out the last time that a British woman triumphed, with Pat Barker being recognised for The Ghost Road."

It'll be 'unlucky, Hilary' says the Contrarian. You're British, a former judge and a woman and that adds up to defeat when the winner of the Man Booker Prize is announced. Especially with that Coetzee fella around.

The Contrarian likes a good read, especially trying to decode those ones with all the mystical symbols that everyone's wild about. What are they called again? Oh yes, that's right - scratch cards. On Tuesday, as you doubtless know, the winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced, and you won't be surprised to hear that the Contrarian, with his love of imaginative analysis, is well-poised to exploit this unique betting opportunity, and will be betting against the [1.93] Betfair favourite Hilary Mantel. Here's why...

Women rarely win
Mantel's chances aren't helped by the fact that just two of the last eight winners have been female, or looking even further back, only three of 11. In addition, the chair of the judges this year is BBC Radio 4 presenter James Naughtie and on five of the last six occasions that there has been a male chair, a man has been declared victorious. In each of the last six years, the gender of the winner has matched that of the majority of the five-person panel. This year there is a male majority.

And neither, surprisingly, do Brits
Shockingly, considering the Booker Prize is primarily a British award, just one UK entry has won in the last decade - Alan Hollinghurst in 2004 with The Line of Beauty. You have to go back even further to find out the last time that a British woman triumphed, with Pat Barker being recognised for The Ghost Road. Admittedly, the chances of at least one of those trends being reversed this year are increased by the fact there is only one foreign entry this year, although he is very formidable...

J. M. Coetzee has a great record
South African-born Australian citizen J. M. Coetzee [6.4] has received the third nomination of his career for Summertime, the latest instalment of his fictionalised autobiography set in Cape Town. On both of the previous occasions that he was up for the prize he was successful, first with Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and more recently in 1999 with Disgrace. The 69-year-old, who holds a Nobel Prize in Literature, is the only author in history to have been nominated more than once without tasting defeat and is bidding to become the first three-time winner in the prize's history, pulling clear of Peter Carey (1988 and 2001).

Fourth Estate are always overlooked
The publisher of Mantel's Wolf Hall is Fourth Estate, who oddly don't have much success with the Booker Prize. They have no problem earning recognition, having had five books nominated since 1993 but none of them, despite being written by four separate authors and covering a range of themes, have ever won. They were overlooked in each of the last two years, with Nicola Barker's Darkmans missing out in 2007 and Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency falling short last year.

It's set too far back in the past
Mantel's Wolf Hall is unique among its rivals in that it is set in Tudor England. The historic approach may not prove a positive though, as the last six winners have all been set in the 1980s or later, so maybe the further back in time you delve, the less chance you have of winning.