It is a trying business being a Booker Prize judge: a book a day for months on end followed by prickly arguments in a locked room over literary merit.
No wonder the “wrong” choice is so often made. An analysis of the public’s view on all the novels shortlisted for the prize since its inception in 1969 has indicated that 80 per cent of the time the judges pick an unpopular winner.
After a 1980s heyday when juries on four occasions selected a winner that became the favourite of the general public, they have coincided only twice in the past two decades.
The last occasion was in 2014 when Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North was the most acclaimed by the judges
