Jane Graham

Arts journalist and columnist

Howard Jacobson hates himself for not being a worse man than he is. The once-proclaimed 'English Philip Roth', Booker Prize winner and literary dirty dog - his new novel Zoo Time, revels in its shoe fetishes and lusty ménage a trois fantasies - he still feels he hasn't sunk to the depths he looked excitedly into as a boy.

Harriet Williams

Journalist, foodie, luddite

Everyone gets nostalgic sometimes. Whether it's because it's raining outside and you can't imagine summer ever coming again, or just because everything seems more difficult now you're no longer five-years-old, it happens to us all. Like the permanent feeling that anything we're not doing is far better than what we are doing, it's part of the human condition.

Carol Birch

Novelist

The Booker process is an adrenalin rush. You embark upon a month of living on trains, in hotel rooms and out of overnight bags. You meet an awful lot of people very quickly. Fortunately, most of them are very nice, as are your fellow listees.

Lucy Scholes

Book reviewer, editor and lecturer based in London.

Tuesday was both Man Booker Prize day (read my account of the controversy, the Cape party and even a few words from Julian Barnes himself here) and the publication date of Books One and Two of Haruki Murakami's long awaited new novel, 1Q84.

Nauman Khalid

Lecturer, writer and broadcaster

Mohammed Hanif's 2008 debut, "A Case of Exploding Mangoes", was an impressive feat of imaginative and literary skill. It justly propelled Mohammad Han...

Sam Kitchener

Writer and Humorist

This year's Man Booker Prize has been plagued by accusations of 'dumbing down', or, as the illiterate goons hauled off the street to act as judges might put it, 'dummin' daaan'.