McEwan up for top prize

THE BOOKER PRIZE winner Ian McEwan has been shortlisted for the pounds 85,000 Impac literary award, the world's richest literary prize.

McEwan, who won last year's Booker with his novel Amsterdam, now has his earlier Enduring Love among eight contenders for the fiction prize set up 13 years ago by management company Impac and Dublin corporation. The list was selected from 100 books nominated by libraries in more than 50 countries.

For the first time a debut novel is listed. Ingenious Pain, by Bristol- born Andrew Miller who lives in Paris, is the story of the rise, fall and redemption of a man unable to feel pain.

Also on the list are Quarantine by Jim Crace which won the 1997 Whitbread Novel Award; Underworld by Don DeLillo; The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami; The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick; and The Reader by Bernard Schlink.

The winner will be announced in Dublin on 17 May.