From the birth of modern India to the wild early days of settlement in Australia, the unmistakable golden thread linking them all is the long shadow of the British empire.

Some of the most revered novels of the past 40 years have been narrowed down to just six in a shortlist which will produce what the public judge to be the greatest Booker prize winner of all time.

Salman Rushdie is the favourite to win the Best of the Bookers with 1981's Midnight's Children. The lineup for the award - which aims to honour the best winning novel since the prize began in 1969 - sets him against JM Coetzee's towering Disgrace (1999), as well less well known books such as JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur and Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist. The other shortlisted books are Pat Barker's The Ghost Road (1995) and Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda (1988).

The shortlist was chosen by biographer Victoria Glendinning, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup and John Mullan, professor of English at the University of London. The public will have the final say: voting for the best book begins today at the Man Booker prize website, in advance of a result to be announced on July 10.

Of the six shortlisted books, five deal more or less directly with postcolonial experience, and three are historical novels. The authors span four continents: Barker and Farrell were born in England, Coetzee and Gordimer in South Africa, Carey in Australia and Rushdie in India - although Farrell spent much of his life in Ireland, Rushdie settled in Britain, and Carey moved to the US.

The shortlist also represents a senior generation of writers: four were born in the 1940s, one in the 1930s and one in the 1920s. While JG Farrell died in a fishing accident in 1979, the rest are very much with us.
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