LONDON, Oct 13 — This year the Man Booker Prize is open to authors of any nationality for the second year in its history, and book lovers and bookies alike are placing their bets on the six diverse writers in the running to win today.

Jamaica, the UK, the US and Nigeria are represented on the 2015 shortlist, which was announced last month. At the time, judges’ chair Michael Wood highlighted the diversity of the finalists, saying they “come from very different cultures and are themselves at very different stages of their careers.”

In 2014, Australian author Richard Flanagan took home the prize with his book “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” setting the tone for the prize’s new international approach.

The 2015 shortlist includes Jamaican author Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” which is set in 1976 Jamaica and documents an attack on Bob Marley’s home in the style of an oral biography from multiple perspectives.

From UK author Tom McCarthy, the only shortlisted author to have been nominated for a Booker before, “Satin Island” centres on a “corporate anthropologist” named U in contemporary London as he undertakes two tasks assigned him by his employers, all the while getting caught up in his own quest to find the meaning of our times.

Chigozie Obioma sets his “The Fisherman” in a small town in his home country of Nigeria in the mid-1990s. A nine-year-old narrator tells the story of an evil prophecy that creates a rift between brothers, illuminating the country’s political and cultural complexity.

The UK’s Sunjeev Sahota is in the running with “The Year of the Runaways,” about 13 young Indian men who live in a house in Sheffield, where they’ve each come in search of a new life.

American author Anne Tyler is shortlisted with the Bailey Women’s Prize-nominated “A Spool of Blue Thread,” an intergenerational story about a family and the events, secrets and moments that have defined it.

Hanya Yanagihara, also of the US, examines the lives of college friends in “A Little Life,” as they move to New York together and change throughout the decades, always drawn together by their troubled friend Jude.

UK betting sites William Hill and Ladbrokes show “A Little Life” topping their lists, while The Telegraph reported that a mystery punter who accurately predicted the 2014 winner was back for 2015 and naming “The Year of the Runaways” as his latest pick.

The winner will be announced on October 13 in London’s Guildhall. Shortlisted authors receive £2,500 (RM16,000) and a specially bound edition of their book, while the winner takes home an additional £50,000. — AFP-Relaxnews