After winning most major literary awards on earth, writer Salman Rushdie just got a shot at another one -- this time, the second Man Booker International Prize, 2007. 

Fifteen authors from 10 countries (four being writers in translation) have made it to the List of Contenders for the prize. In an announcement in Toronto, April 12, the chair of judges -- Elaine Showalter, Nadine Gordimer and Colm T�ibin -- released their list. 

India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award 2006

Rushdie, born Ahmed Salman Rushdie on June 19, 1947, in Mumbai, won the prestigious Booker Prize with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981). It then went on to be named Booker of Bookers in 1993. Most recently, he was awarded the first India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006. 

Winning the Man Booker International Prize will be anything but easy, considering the other names he has to contend with. These include Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Peter Carey, Don DeLillo, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Michael Ondaatje and Philip Roth. All much-celebrated writers, some of whom have won Bookers themselves in the past. What they are all recognised for worldwide, however, is their contribution to literature.

Image: Salman Rushdie after accepting the India Abroad Lifetime Achievement Award, 2006 at function in New York on March 23.

Photograph: Paresh Gandhi

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