Aravind Adiga's Booker prize-winning novel The White Tiger has emerged as an early frontrunner for the Impac Dublin literary award, but the Indian writer will have to see off the likes of Nobel laureates Jose Saramago and Toni Morrison if he is to take the world's richest -- and most eclectic -- literary prize.

The Impac, which sees librarians around the world nominate their favourite titles for the award, has longlisted 156 books this year, spanning 46 countries and 18 languages. Bestselling English-language writers Sebastian Barry and Joseph O'Neill are jostling with the largest number of books in translation ever nominated for the prize, including works by Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indridason, Chinese author Ma Jian and Serbian surrealist Zoran Zivkovic. Evelio Rosero's Colombian civil war-set The Armies, which won the Independent foreign fiction prize, also makes the running.

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Adiga is the librarians' favourite, gathering nine nominations for The White Tiger, but he is closely followed by Toni Morrison, who picked up eight for A Mercy, the story of a 17th century slave girl bought by an Anglo-Dutch trader. Muriel Barbery's French bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Barry's Costa-winning The Secret Scripture and Canadian writer Steven Galloway's The Cellist of Sarajevo all won eight nominations as well.