Who will win the Man Booker Prize?

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which will be awarded today in London, has long been one of the most prestigious and lucrative literary awards in the world. But this year, the world of the Booker got much bigger.

This is the first year American authors are eligible for the prize, which was formerly awarded to only authors from the nations that comprised the British Commonwealth. The new rules make English-language novels from any country in the world eligible for the $85,000 award. Two novels from the United States are included on this year’s shortlist:

Joshua Ferris (U.S.), “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour”
Richard Flanagan (Australia), “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”
Karen Joy Fowler (U.S.), “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves”
Howard Jacobson (Britain), “J”
Neel Mukherjee (Britain), “The Lives of Others”
Ali Smith (Britain), “How to be Both”

Not everybody is happy with the rule change. Peter Carey, the Australian novelist who won the award twice for “Oscar and Lucinda” and “True History of the Kelly Gang,” criticized the decision in an interview with The Guardian, saying, “There was and there is a real Commonwealth culture. It’s different. America doesn’t really feel to be a part of that.”

Other writers, though, say the problem isn’t the inclusion of Americans, but the tendency for the award to be given to the same group of writers. U.S. author Colin Dickey says the Booker should expand its horizons: “But the problem seems to me less that Americans are being considered than that the same names keep reappearing. Is the Commonwealth really so devoid of great writers that you keep coming back to the same handful?”

It’s difficult to predict which book will win this year. If the award were a popularity contest (and it’s very much not), Karen Joy Fowler would have the edge. As journalist Anita Singh points out in the Telegraph, “Fowler’s novel, ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,’ has sold more than three times the rest of the Booker shortlist combined.”

The bookmakers at William Hill, though, favor Neel Mukherjee to take home the award, giving the Indian British novelist 5:2 odds for his novel “The Lives of Others.” U.S. writers Fowler and Ferris are considered longshots.

The announcement will be broadcast live online at the BBC Arts website at 1:30 p.m. Pacific.