Rushdie is bookies’ favourite to win this year’s Booker

Salman Rushdie (pictured with Michelle de Kretser) has already won the Best of the Booker award, judged by the public earlier this year. Now he’s odds-on favourite to win this year’s Man Booker prize for his latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, following the release today of the longlist for the £50,000 prize.

Rushdie, who Ladbrokes have at 4/1, is up against 12 other writers who cover most of the bases in terms of experience and novelty as well as age and geography. There are first-time novelists, including Aravind Adiga and Tom Rob Smith, who is a stripling at 29 year. The oldest writer on the list is 81-year-old John Berger, who won the Booker 36 years ago. Aside from British novelists, there are writers from Ireland, Pakistan, India and Australia.

As usual, there are some notable omissions: neither Hanif Kureishi, Howard Jacobson or Doris Lessing made the cut. There had also been pre-longlist praise for Helen Garner's The Spare Room, also omitted.

One book that might give Rushdie a run for his money is The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser, which A S Byatt has tipped as a potential winner. Reviewing it in the Financial Times, she called it "the best novel I have read for a long time".

The judges, who are led by the former Tory Minister Michael Portillo and include novelist Louise Doughty and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli, will whittle the list down to six by September 9. The winner will be announced at London’s Guildhall on October 14.

The full longlist list for 2008 is: Aravind Adiga, White Tiger; Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress; Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture; John Berger, From A to X; Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog; Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies; Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs; Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes; Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency; Joseph O’Neill, Netherland; Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence; Tom Rob Smith, Child 44; Steve Tolz, A Fraction of the Whole.