What it's like judging the Man Booker Prize

The Man Booker Prize judges will meet tomorrow morning in London to discuss which of six novels should emerge as the 2018 winner.

As hard as that might sound, the leadup sounds even more intense.

That was our takeaway from The New York Times’s interview of crime writer Val McDermid, one of the five judges.

Some key figures of interest if you don’t have time to read the whole thing immediately:

171: The number of books the Man Booker judges have read in the past seven months.

100: McDermid’s estimate of how many books she reads in a normal twelve-month period.

2 to 3: The number of times McDermid read some of the entries, because she reread each book that was longlisted and each that was shortlisted. 

0: The number of times McDermid wants to do this job again.

The six finalists for the Man Booker Prize are:

• Milkman, by Anna Burns (UK).

• Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan (Canada).

• Everything Under, by Daisy Johnson (UK).

• The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner (US).

• The Overstory, by Richard Powers (US).

• The Long Take, by Robin Robertson (UK).