The new £60,000 award is open to writers of all nationalities who write in English or are widely translated. And the nominees are:

Margaret Atwood (Canada)
Saul Bellow (Canada)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)
Gunter Grass (Germany)
Ismail Kadare (Albania)
Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
Stanislaw Lem (Poland)
Doris Lessing (UK)
Ian McEwan (UK)
Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)
Tomas Eloy Martinez (Argentina)
Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
Cynthia Ozick (US)
Philip Roth (US)
Muriel Spark (UK)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
John Updike (US)
Abraham B Yehoshua (Israel)

Obviously Garcia Marquez and Kundera are my picks here, though I'd be happy enough with an Atwood, Bellow, Oe, or Roth pick, and you've got to root for a Polish science fiction writer, you've just go to. I like the one short story of Cynthia Ozick's I've read.

Mostly, I just feel chastened by the number of people on this list I haven't read yet, particularly Gunter Grass, who I'm told I should. And look for a PClem implosion if Updike wins.