• Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
• The Long Song by Andrea Levy
• C by Tom McCarthy

• Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Faber and Faber)
• Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
• The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (Penguin - Fig Tree)
• In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)
• The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
• C by Tom McCarthy (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
• February by Lisa Moore (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
• Trespass by Rose Tremain (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
• The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

• The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden
• Troubles by J. G. Farrell
• The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard
• Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault
• The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
• The Vivisector by Patrick White

On picking up the 50,000 [pound] award at tonight's (6th October) ceremony at London's Guildhall, the author said she was "happily flying through the air". The win will come as no surprise to the bookies, who had Mantel leading the pack since the shortlist was announced a month ago.

This morning The Bookseller reported that Mantel had become the first ever odds-on favourite in the race to win the Man Booker prize: Ladbroke's was offering odds of 8/13, while at William Hill she was placed at 10/11. The last time the favourite won was 2002, when Yann Martell's Life of Pi (Canongate) took home the prize.

• AS Byatt, The Children's Book (Random House - Chatto and Windus)
• Coetzee, J M, Summertime (Random House - Harvill Secker)
• Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
• Sarah Hall, How to paint a dead man (Faber and Faber)
• Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
• James Lever, Me Cheeta (HarperCollins - Fourth Estate)
• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (HarperCollins - Fourth Estate)
• Simon Mawer, The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
• Ed O'Loughlin, Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin - Ireland)
• JamesScudamore, Heliopolis (Random House - Harvill Secker)
• Colm Toibin, Brooklyn (Penguin - Viking)
• William Trevor, Love and Summer (Penguin - Viking)
• Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger (Little, Brown - Virago)

• Peter Carey (Australia)
• Evan S. Connell (USA)
• Mahasweta Devi (India)
• E.L. Doctorow (USA)
• James Kelman (UK)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
• Arnost Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
• Alice Munro (Canada)
• V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
• Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
• Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)
• Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
• Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

"Midnight's Children" won the Booker Prize in 1981, and the Indian-born writer was hot favorite to take the award decided by the public from a shortlist of six in an online poll. The 61-year-old, whose 1988 novel "The Satanic Verses" outraged many Muslims and prompted death threats against him, also won the 25th anniversary Booker prize in 1993.

"I think it was an extraordinary shortlist and it was an honor to be on it," Rushdie said in a recorded message from the United States, where he is on a book tour. His sons, Zafar and Milan, accepted a trophy in London on his behalf, and the author said it was apt that "my real children (are) accepting a prize for my imaginary children." Milan, the youngest, added: "I'm really looking forward to reading it when I'm older. Well done Dad."

Victoria Glendinning, chair of the panel who drew up a shortlist, said the entries were dominated by themes of the end of empire and two world wars. "These are the nettles we have been compelled to try and grasp," she told reporters. But there was some criticism of the award, partly because the choice was narrowed to just six nominees. "It's an artificial exercise, simply because the general public only got to pick from six of the previous winners," said Jonathan Ruppin, promotions manager at Foyles bookshop.

The Best of the Booker, a one-off award, is announced today to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Booker Prize. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction recognises and is awarded for the best novel of the year; and now The Best of the Booker will honour the best overall novel to have won the prize since it was first awarded on 22 April 1969.

This is only the second time that a celebratory award has been created. The first was in 1993 - the 25th anniversary - when Salman Rushdie won the Booker of Bookers with Midnight's Children. However, unlike then, this time the public will be able to cast their vote.

In all, 41 novelists have won the prize over the years because in 1974 and 1992 there were two winners. In 1974 Nadine Gordimer won with The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton with Holiday. In 1992 Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient shared the top spot with Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger.

For The Best of the Booker, a panel of judges has been appointed to select a shortlist of six novels. They are biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning, (Chair); writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, Professor of English at UCL. Their shortlist will be announced in May, and public voting will then begin via the Man Booker Prize website - www.themanbookerprize.com.

The winner of the £60,000 prize is chosen from the 15-strong shortlist and will be announced in June. Others on the shortlist include Doris Lessing, Peter Carey, Salman Rushdie and John Banville. The original Booker Prize is open only to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.

The international award includes writers from Canada, Britain, the US, Australia, Ireland, France, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria and the Netherlands. In a statement, the judging panel - academic Elaine Showalter and novelists Nadine Gordimer and Colm Toibin - said the nominees were "diverse in nationality, language, themes and techniques but united in their dedication to the power of the word". The inaugural prize for the International Booker was won in 2005 by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

The Indian-born novelist Kiran Desai triumphed last night by winning the £50,000 Man Booker prize with her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, a story replete with sadness over globalisation and with pleasure at the surviving intimacies of Indian village life.

She beat the bookies, who put her fifth out of six in the award shortlist, rating her as a 5/1 outsider, compared with odds of 6-4 on Sarah Waters' The Night Watch, the favourite.

At her first attempt Desai, 35, not only became the youngest woman to win but achieved a victory which repeatedly eluded her mother. The esteemed Indian novelist Anita Desai - to whom The Inheritance of Loss is dedicated - has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker. On hearing the result Desai said: "The debt I owe to my mother is so profound that I feel the book is hers as much as mine. It was written in her company and in her wisdom and kindness."

This year's head judge, Hermione Lee, left no doubt that it was "the strength of the book's humanity" which gave it the edge after a long and passionate debate among the judges. "It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness," Professor Lee said. "Her mother will be proud of her."

Peter Carey for Theft: A Love Story (Faber & Faber). He has written nine novels, including the Man Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda and The True History of the Kelly Gang.

Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton). The Indian-born author wrote Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.

Robert Edric for Gathering the Water (Doubleday). He was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2002 for Peacetime.

Nadine Gordimer for Get a Life (Bloomsbury). The South African received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

Kate Grenville for The Secret River (Canongate). She won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection.

M. J. Hyland for Carry Me Down (Canongate). The Londoner lives and works in Melbourne.

Howard Jacobson for Kalooki Nights (Jonathan Cape). The novelist and broadcaster lectured at the University of Sydney for three years before returning to England where he taught English at Selwyn College.

James Lasdun for Seven Lies (Jonathan Cape). The Londoner lives in New York and has published collections of poetry and short stories.

Mary Lawson for The Other Side of the Bridge (Chatto & Windus). She was born and brought up in a farming community in Ontario and now lives in England with her husband.

Jon McGregor for So Many Ways to Begin (Bloomsbury). The Bermudan-born author who lives in Nottingham was the only first-time novelist on the 2002 Man Booker longlist.

Hisham Matar for In the Country of Men (Viking). He was born in New York and spent his childhood in Libya and Egypt. He has lived in London since 1986.

Claire Messud for The Emperor's Children (Picador). Her first novel, When the World was Steady, was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

David Mitchell for Black Swan Green (Sceptre). He spent several years teaching in Japan and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

Naeem Murr for The Perfect Man (William Heinemann). His acclaimed first novel The Boy was published in 1998.

Andrew O’Hagan for Be Near Me (Faber & Faber). He was nominated in 2003 by Granta magazine as one of 20 Best of Young British Novelists.

James Robertson for The Testament of Gideon Mack (Hamish Hamilton). His first novel, The Fanatic, was published in 2000.

Edward St Aubyn for Mother's Milk (Picador). His previous novels include A Clue to the Exit.

Barry Unsworth for The Ruby in her Navel (Hamish Hamilton). His Sacred Hunger won the Booker in 1992.

Sarah Waters for The Night Watch (Virago). Her first novel, Tipping the Velvet, won the 1999 Betty Trask Award.

[Kazuo] Ishiguro was nominated for Never Let Me Go, about three children who "confront the truth" about their seemingly happy childhood in the English countryside, the Booker Prize organizers announced on the award's website. He won the Booker Prize for his 1989 novel The Remains of the Day, later made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

[Julian]Barnes was nominated for Arthur and George," a fictionalized account of events involving Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in the late 19th century. The other finalists are Zadie Smith for On Beauty, John Banville for The Sea, Sebastian Barry for A Long Long Way, and Ali Smith for The Accidental.