Booker judges give 'patchy' Rushdie the thumbs down

Salman Rushdie, by far the biggest name on the Man Booker prize longlist, has been snubbed as the judges whittled down the names from 13 to a six-strong shortlist of "page-turners".

The Enchantress of Florence was the favourite to win the prize before the announcement of the shortlist. Midnight's Children, which won the award in 1981, was this year voted the best of the Bookers in a public poll.

"I think Rushdie's writing is patchy, to be honest," said broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli, a member of the judging panel. "He has written some good books and some not-so good books. There is no doubting the man's massive intellect. But I have never known a book split the public so much as Midnight's Children. People will secretly confess to not finishing. Others will secretly confess to hating it. For others, it is the one book they would take to their grave."

Nor did the judges agonise unduly over Rushdie's exclusion.

"In the opinions of five people taken together, The Enchantress of Florence simply wasn't one of the top six books," said the former MP Michael Portillo, the chair of the judges.

"I wouldn't say we had a heated debate over it. We certainly had passionate debates - but there wasn't a particularly passionate debate over this book." Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, the other really weighty name on the longlist, also failed to make the cut.

There was an unusual degree of consensus among the judges, said Portillo. "At every stage there were some books that just leaped out at you." The panel ended up with a list they described as "page-turning" and "readable". According to Portillo: "We have brought you fun."

The biggest names on the list are Sebastian Barry, for The Secret Scripture; Linda Grant, for The Clothes on Their Backs; and Philip Hensher, for The Northern Clemency. The others are Amitav Ghosh's multilayered epic Sea of Poppies, Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, a novel about modern India; and Steve Toltz's anarchic A Fraction of the Whole. The last two are both debut novels.

Portillo said it was a shortlist of "quite epic stories. Both the Toltz and the Hensher, for instance, are written on an epic scale; while The Secret Scripture encompasses 80 years of Irish history." He stopped short of describing any of the books as masterpieces, however.

"It doesn't matter whether I will or will not use that word, because I am not a literary expert," he said. "The word masterpiece is probably overused."

Ion Trewin, the literary director of Man Booker prizes, said that readability had not been consciously sought by the judges, but "it was only when the list was settled we realised it was the most readable in years". He added: "The whole point of the prize when it was set up was to get literary fiction out to a large audience," describing the Man Booker as "Richard and Judy for grown-ups".

Singh Kohli said: "It is not for me to criticise past shortlists. But I have felt that obtuseness has been celebrated somewhat in the past. I want a book to tell me a story - and put me in the company of great characters."

The novelist Louise Doughty, another judge, said: "The ability to come up with a good plot and create a good structure are great literary qualities - it is not just about how to make a finely turned sentence. The ability to move a story on in an engaging way, and the creation of character - these are great literary skills."

The bookies' favourite at 2-1 is Barry's novel; but Toltz's A Fraction of the Whole is also causing excitement in some quarters, as is Sea of Poppies, the first part of a trilogy that opens on the eve of the opium war, described by Portillo as "a swashbuckling, buccaneering kind of story".

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on October 14. Last year's winner, Anne Enright's The Gathering, has sold more than 200,000 copies in Britain.