Booker Prize 2019: Bookies back Atwood, Shafak, Ellmann over Rusdhie and others

LONDON (AP) — Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood is the bookies' favorite to win the coveted fiction trophy again for "The Testaments," her follow-up to dystopian saga "The Handmaid's Tale."

Atwood, who won in 2000 for "The Blind Assassin," is one of six finalists for the 50,000-pound ($63,000) prize, whose winner will be announced Monday.

British bookmakers also give strong odds to British-Turkish author Elif Shafak for the Istanbul-set story "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World" and U.S.-British writer Lucy Ellmann for her 1,000-page stream-of-consciousness novel "Ducks, Newburyport."

The other contenders are Salman Rushdie for "Quichotte," a modern-day retelling of "Don Quixote"; Britain's Bernardine Evaristo for "Girl, Woman, Other"; and Nigeria's Chigozie Obioma for "An Orchestra of Minorities."

Founded in 1969, the prize is open to English-language authors from any country.