SHORTLIST

In The Running…

. Milkman by Anna Burns (published by Faber for £14.99)

PLOT: The Troubles provide a subtle backdrop of simmering threat to this inventively written novel, set in Belfast in the 1970s and narrated by an unnamed 18-year-old, whose semi-abusive relationship with a creepy older man is the subject of prurient gossip among the close-knit community.

Critic: Against a bomb-shattered landscape, rendered toxic by a climate of prejudice, intimidation, suspicion and half-truths, Burns explores to exhilarating effect the treacherous nature of language.

Chance of winning: 6/1

. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (published by Serpent’s Tail for £14.99)

PLOT: Beginning on a 19th-century cotton plantation in Barbados, this genre-mashing historical romp is the story of an artistically gifted teenage slave who endures great brutality at the hands of his master. When he is taken under the wing of his master’s brother, a scientist and explorer, he manages to escape, setting the stage for a quasi-fantastical run across Europe and North Africa.

Critic: Fascinating and enjoyable, but rather like the hot air balloon that took Black from Barbados, it sometimes drifts off course.

Chance of winning: 4/1

. Everything Under by Daisy Johnson (published by Cape for £14.99)

PLOT: The debut novel from 27-year-old Johnson is modern-day reworking of the mythical story of Oedipus with a feminist twist. Gretel’s mother left when she was a teenager and now Gretel is an adult, she wants to find her – a search that takes her back to the semi-lawless marginal world of Oxford’s boat-dwelling communities, where she grew up.

Critic: For all the atmosphere of menace, Johnson’s handling of her Sophociean themes can be remarkably clumsy.

Hums with an electricity pylon-charge of danger.

Chance of winning: 5/1

. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner (published by Cape for £16.99)

PLOT: A former stripper, Romy is serving two life sentences after killing her stalker. There’s not a great deal of plot in this cacophonous novel which, alongside Romy, features the voices of fellow inmates to give a rare insight into America’s punitive justice system.

Critic: The final pages are likely to leave you in tears.

Kushner revels in her characters’ vitality, showing how they work the system to their advantage by exploiting every loophole.

Chance of winning: 7/1

. The Overstory by Richard Powers (published by Cornerstone for £18.99)

PLOT: Multiple stories make up this epic, centuries-spanning environmental novel in which a wide cast of characters, from a Vietnam vet to a party-loving undergraduate, are brought together across time and space through their shared determination to save America’s last remaining acres of virgin forest.

Critic: Powers, always a writer of big ideas, has dropped one of the most thoughtful and involving popular novels that you are likely to have read for years.

There is a great deal of evangelism to absorb.

Chance of winning: 5/2

. The Long Take by Robin Robertson (published by Picador for £14.99)

PLOT: Not a novel, but a 223-page-long narrative poem. This is the story of Walker, a Canadian D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who, after the war goes across the U.S. in search of work – and himself.

Critic: Robertson’s The Long Take shows it is perfectly possible to write poetry which is both accessible and subtle.

It builds to a bravura climax but lacks the pace to carry off pages of exposition.

Chance of winning: 4/1

– The Man Booker Prize winner will be announced on October 16