Verse retelling of Greek myth leads a shortlist for the £40,000 prize with combined UK sales of fewer than 20,000 copies
The finalists for the Folio Prize 2014. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
Anne Carson's verse novel Red Doc> is heading the charge to win the inaugural Folio prize, the new literary award which is setting out to reward excellence in fiction with a £40,000 prize pot.
The Canadian poet's highly original work, which sees the mythical red-winged monster Geryon enter manhood, has been given odds of 3/1 to win the Folio by Ladbrokes, marginally ahead of Sergio De La Pava's A Naked Singularity, a novel that he originally self-published, and which is at 7/2 to take the Folio by the bookies.
Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is at 4/1, said Ladbrokes, while Jane Gardam's Last Friends – the bestselling title from the shortlist, with almost 6,000 paper copies sold in the UK – at 9/2, and Amity Gaige's Schroder at 6/1. George Saunders' short story collection Tenth of December, which has sold just over 4,500 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, is also at 6/1, with Kent Haruf's novel Benediction – reviewed in the Guardian this week as "stunningly original" – last at 7/1, along with Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.
The Folio prize will go to the book the judges – headed by poet Lavinia Greenlaw – determine best fulfils its criterion of excellence. After the 2011 Booker prize drew criticism over judges' search for "readability", and for a book's ability to "zip along", the Folio is looking "to identify works of fiction in which the story being told and the subjects being explored achieve their most perfect and thrilling expression".
Its eight shortlisted titles range from McBride's debut, a book about a young woman's relationship with her brother that led Anne Enright to call the author a "genius" in the Guardian, to US author Gaige's novel , Schroder, about a man who kidnaps his young daughter. None of the books have, to date, sold more than 6,000 copies, with Gardam's Last Friends, the third novel in her Old Filth trilogy, the only one to have breached the 5,000-copy mark, and three selling less than 1,000 copies to date.
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The Canadian poet's highly original work, which sees the mythical red-winged monster Geryon enter manhood, has been given odds of 3/1 to win the Folio by Ladbrokes, marginally ahead of Sergio De La Pava's A Naked Singularity, a novel that he originally self-published, and which is at 7/2 to take the Folio by the bookies.
Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is at 4/1, said Ladbrokes, while Jane Gardam's Last Friends – the bestselling title from the shortlist, with almost 6,000 paper copies sold in the UK – at 9/2, and Amity Gaige's Schroder at 6/1. George Saunders' short story collection Tenth of December, which has sold just over 4,500 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, is also at 6/1, with Kent Haruf's novel Benediction – reviewed in the Guardian this week as "stunningly original" – last at 7/1, along with Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.
The Folio prize will go to the book the judges – headed by poet Lavinia Greenlaw – determine best fulfils its criterion of excellence. After the 2011 Booker prize drew criticism over judges' search for "readability", and for a book's ability to "zip along", the Folio is looking "to identify works of fiction in which the story being told and the subjects being explored achieve their most perfect and thrilling expression".
Its eight shortlisted titles range from McBride's debut, a book about a young woman's relationship with her brother that led Anne Enright to call the author a "genius" in the Guardian, to US author Gaige's novel , Schroder, about a man who kidnaps his young daughter. None of the books have, to date, sold more than 6,000 copies, with Gardam's Last Friends, the third novel in her Old Filth trilogy, the only one to have breached the 5,000-copy mark, and three selling less than 1,000 copies to date.
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