BOOKER SHORTLIST 2007 !

At-a-glance: Booker shortlist 2007

Judges including Last King of Scotland novelist Giles Foden and actress Imogen Stubbs selected the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize for Fiction, which is being awarded on Tuesday evening.
Here is a quick guide to the six authors who have made it onto the list this year, and the books for which they have been nominated.

Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Nicola Barker British-born Barker spent her childhood in South Africa, returning to the UK at the age of 14. She was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, for Clear: A Transparent Novel.
Darkmans sees a dysfunctional family in Ashford, Kent, haunted by John Scogin, Edward IV's court jester.

Anne Enright - The Gathering

Anne Enright
The Irish author has published three previous novels including the Whitbread-nominated What Are You Like? in 2000. She has also released Making Babies, her light-hearted diaries of motherhood.
The Gathering is about an Irish woman who is prompted by her brother's suicide to revisit three generations of bleak history of her large, dysfunctional family.

Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid
Hailing from Pakistan, Hamid studied at Princeton and Harvard in the US before working as a management consultant in New York.
In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, his second novel, a Pakistani Princeton graduate becomes a high-flyer in Manhattan. But he discovers a different side to his adopted home and his own beliefs after the 11 September attacks.

Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip

Lloyd Jones
New Zealander Lloyd Jones has been gathering attention and acclaim since his first novel was published 22 years ago.
Mister Pip, about a girl on a war-torn South Pacific island who becomes enthralled by Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall Best Book Award 2007.

Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach

Ian McEwan
A Booker favourite, McEwan has been shortlisted for the award three times, winning in 1998 for Amsterdam. Many of his novels have been adapted for the big screen, with Atonement, starring Keira Knightley, in the cinemas at the moment.
Set in 1960s England, On Chesil Beach tells the story of Edward and Florence, a young couple anticipating the first night of their honeymoon - and the impact it has on the rest of their married lives. It is the bookmakers' favourite for the prize.

Indra Sinha - Animal's People

Indra Sinha
Sinha was born in India and educated in the UK, where he went on to become an advertising copywriter and published a translation of the Kama Sutra.
The 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal forms the setting for the story, about a man who was left with mental and physical defects after such a catastrophe. It is partly based on the life of Sunil Kumar, who committed suicide aged 34 last year.
BBC NEWS REPORT.