Rushdie in running for Best of Booker

Salmon Rushdie has been named as the favourite to win the Best of the Booker award.

William Hill has put the writer's chances of collecting the prestigious prize at 5-1. The Best of Booker prize has been created to pay tribute to the award which has been running from 1969.

Some six nominations were put forward from the previous 41 Booker prize winning novels.

The judging panel are optimistic that the competition will encourage readers to revisit exceptional novels.

Victoria Glendinning, chair of the judging panel, said: "The Best of the Booker is a wonderful opportunity to read, or reread, some of the best literature in English of the past four decades."

Mr Rushdie's Midnight's Children made it onto the shortlist and it will join novels penned by JM Coetzee, JG Farrell, Pat Barker, Peter Carey and Nadine Gordimer.

Midnight's Children won the Booker award in 1981 and it also netted Rushdie the Booker of Bookers in 1993 which recognised the best novel to have won the Booker prize at that time.

The award winning story charts the struggles of India's independence from British rule through its main character Saleem Sinai.

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