Explainer: Who will win the 2023 Booker Prize?

Sometime around breakfast time on Monday in Aotearoa, one book will be named the best novel of 2023. Who will win? Why should you care? Settle in and read all about it.

What's all the fuss about?

The Booker Prize calls itself the "leading literary award in the English-speaking world". This is no idle claim. While the award was designed to "stimulate the reading and discussion of contemporary fiction", in more commercial terms this award can transform authors into global names and sell hundreds of thousands of books.

In August, the judging panel releases 'the Booker Dozen' - a longlist of 13 novels written in English and published in the UK or Ireland the previous year. This is then whittled down to a short list of six. Even making the long list is an achievement; in 2023, 163 books were entered by publishers.

Winning the Booker is a massive career boost for authors. Bernardine Evaristo, the first Black woman to win a Booker when she won jointly with Margaret Atwood in 2019 (despite it being against the rules, quite a scandal), recalls how she was suddenly given a forum.

"Suddenly I was given a certain kind of gravitas, and respect and authority." And the Booker's boost to sales cannot be underestimated: Evaristo's book, Girl, Woman, Other, is said to have doubled its entire sales in the first five days after it won.

Then there is the money for the author. Fifty thousand pounds (NZ$103,574.75) is a good haul. Not as good as the Nobel Prize for Literature which is 11 million Swedish Krona (around NZ$1.7 million), but a lot more generous than France's Prix Goncourt which earns the winner €10 (NZ$18). New Zealand's Ockham awards disburse a particularly good prize of $64,000 to the winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction.

Are there any New Zealand authors on the shortlist?

Not this year, but there has been a strong New Zealand connection in the past. Keri Hulme won for the bone people in 1985. Lloyd Jones was shortlisted for Mr Pip in 2007 and Eleanor Catton won with The Luminaries in 2013. Last year there was Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka, who won with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. 'Massey grad wins Booker,' pointed out Newsroom.

Who's going to win?

There are six books on the shortlist:

• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - a dystopian novel in Ireland sinking into Civil War
• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray - a funny tragic novel of an imploding Irish family
• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein - a meditation on the power of obedience
• Western Lane by Chetna Maroo - a teen girl copes with grief by turning to squash
• This Other Eden by Paul Harding - a retelling of the true story of a US community crushed by racism
• If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery - the son of a Jamaican immigrant faces racism and poverty in the US.

The critics have generally favoured four of the six shortlisted books. The two Irish novels, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, and Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, have been well-reviewed, as have This Other Eden by Paul Harding and Sarah Bernstein's Study for Obedience. The two debut novels on the shortlist, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo and If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, are trailing the others by some margin.

In the UK, the bookmakers (betting agencies, not publishers) have steadily shortened their odds; Prophet Song is the clear favourite, while The Bee Sting has slipped down the rankings. After that, the betting money is all over the shop. Sportsbet has Study for Obedience second, with The Bee Sting and This Other Eden, third equal. Nicer Odds has This Other Eden second, The Bee Sting third and Study for Obedience nowhere. William Hill, the big British bookie, likewise has Prophet Song as favourite. Sadly, Western Lane and If I Survive You are the long shots under every betting scenario.

Do these novels have anything in common?

Apart from the fact that three of the shortlisted authors are men called Paul? The Booker judges worked hard in their announcement to find common ground between six novels whose authors are British, Canadian, Irish and American. Chair Esi Edugyan said they typified the "unease" of the moment, although the Sydney Morning Herald felt that unease was understating the case.

Despite the seriousness of common themes like climate change, racial differences and persecution of minorities, they are often surprisingly funny. They all have epic, cinematic key scenes that are arresting for the reader. They also have forceful voices for their narrators or lead characters, including even Study for Obedience with its obedient, disconcerting housekeeper.

Isn't the announcement of a book award-winner a bit of a snooze-fest?

Hardly. One of the great joys of the Booker is the highly entertaining literary spats and occasional odd choices. There have been some doozies.

In 1994, when James Kelman won for How Late it Was, How Late, one of the judges, Julia Neuberger, called the novel "frankly... crap" and said awarding it the prize was a disgrace. The London Times' literary critic, Simon Jenkins agreed, calling it "literary vandalism" and Kelman an "illiterate savage".

Two years later, one of the judges from 1996 (who had picked Graham Swift's Last Orders) called the prize a "pile of crooked nonsense". A.L Kennedy said the winner was decided by "who knows who, who's sleeping with who, who's selling drugs to who, who's married to who, whose turn it is". She rounded it off by saying, "I read the 300 novels, and no other bastard did."

One of the judges disagreed. "I was anticipating champagne and cigars and 1000 pound-a-night escort girls, but absolutely nothing was forthcoming," he said, sorrowfully.

More recently, there were more headlines when the judges, forsaking the rules, split the prize between Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood. An "epic fail" which diminished both writers, harrumphed one former judge. Apparently, the uproar in the room when it was announced was so loud it drowned out protesting Extinction Rebellion protesters outside.

Most years there is at least one "boycott the Booker" story; the books are too readable, too unreadable, the prize should be British, it should be global, the sponsors are wrong, there is no place in the modern world for prizes, and so on.

To be fair, predicting the winner can be difficult for two reasons; the judges change every year so there is little continuity, but also there are occasional wobbles as the prize tries to navigate between literary merit and some popular appeal.

John Banville, who won for The Sea in 2005, once said he hardly expected to win the prize "which in general promotes, good middlebrow fiction". Six years later, a row erupted over whether the prize should reward literary skill or readability - or whether that was a false distinction. The then chair of the jury Stella Rimington was criticised for saying they wanted people to buy and read the books, not buy, and admire them.

Finally, predictions?

Personally, I would give it to The Bee Sting, with Prophet Song a hair's breadth behind; two superb Irish novels. And Study for Obedience as an outlier. But I think the Booker judges will go for Prophet Song; a story of war refugees for our time.

When will we know?

The winner will be announced sometime on the evening of Sunday, 26 November at a literary event in London. That will be the morning of Monday 27 November in New Zealand.

So are they are good?

Come back to rnz.co.nz tomorrow afternoon for Jeremy Rees' reviews of all the short-listed novels.