And Joseph O'Neill and Salman Rushdie, previously considered locks, aren't on it! Among the six books short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize are two debut novelists (Aravind Adiga and Steve Toltz) and previous short-lister Sebastian Barry.

The books still in contention are:

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)

With O'Neil's Netherland (which the Times' Michiko Kakutani compared to The Great Gatsby and The New Yorker's James Wood hailed as "one of the most remarkable postcolonial books I have ever read") and Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence out, Barry, whose novel The Secret Scripture traces the dual stories of an elderly mental patient and a hospital's chief psychiatrist, is now the heavy favorite. Whatever, though — the book world now focuses its attention on Financial Times critic John Sutherland, who promised to "curry [his] proof copy and eat it" if The Enchantress of Florence didn't win.

Man Booker Prize 2008 announces shortlist [Official site]

Earlier: Booker Prize Long List Announced; Can Anything Beat ‘Netherland’?