Booker shortlist marked by humorous novels

The most humorous shortlist in the history of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction has been announced – with Peter Carey’s inclusion meaning the Australian could become the first author to win three times.

Mr Carey is up for the award for Parrot And Olivier In America, described as an irrepressibly funny portrait of the impossible friendship between master and servant. He won previously in 1988 and 2001.

Six authors have been shortlisted, including British writers Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question, Andrea Levy for The Long Song, her first novel in six years, and Tom McCarthy for C.

Irish born writer Emma Donoghue’s Room, a story inspired by Josef Fritzl’s incarceration of his daughter Elisabeth, has been made 9 – 4 favourite to win by bookmaker Ladbrokes.

South African Damon Galgut’s In A Strange Room, about one man’s search for love and for a place to call home, has also made the cut.

Mr Galgut’s novel is described as perhaps the only book on the shortlist not to have a strong humorous aspect. Ion Trewin, literary director of the Man Booker prizes, said it was the most humorous shortlist in the history of the prize, which began in 1969.

He said: “There’s more humour in this shortlist than I can certainly recall in the last decade, or, in fact, in the history of the prize. I’d love to be able to say it’s a reaction to the economic crisis but much of the time the life of the novel starts very early on, before the economic crisis.”

Even Room, the first half of which takes place entirely within the 11-foot-square room in which a young woman has spent her last seven years, since being abducted aged 19, had “humour in it because it was seen through the eyes of a five-year-old”.

Novels with comedy in them were no longer considered unliterary, as they were in the earliest days of the prize, he said.