JAIPUR, India | Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:33am EST

JAIPUR, India (Reuters) - Two authors who had books banned in their home countries featured prominently in the list of 10 nominees for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, the judging panel said on Thursday.

Chinese author Yan Lianke and Russia's Vladimir Sorokin stood out from a list of nominees from nine different countries in the running for the 60,000 pound ($95,000) prize for global writers whose fiction is written in or translated into English.

"These are writers who we have found ourselves enduringly grateful to, who we will re-read," said Christopher Ricks, chairman of the five-man judging panel, at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India where the list was released.

"They write in ways that are astonishingly different."

Around 150 authors were considered for the prize, which will be awarded on May 22 in London, Ricks added.

Marie NDiaye, from France, is the youngest ever nominee for the prize, at 45, and joins Peter Stamm, Switzerland's first nominee, on the list.

The United States has two nominees, Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson, the only writer this year to have been shortlisted for the prize in the past.

Canadian Josip Novakovich, Israeli Aharon Appelfeld, Indian U.R. Ananthamurthy and Intizar Husain from Pakistan complete the list of nominees.

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.

The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2013 consists of the scholar and literary critic, Christopher Ricks; author and essayist, Elif Batuman; writer and broadcaster, Aminatta Forna; novelist, Yiyun Li and author and academic, Tim Parks.

Philip Roth won the prize in 2011, Alice Munro in 2009, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Ismail Kadaré won the inaugural prize in 2005. In addition, there is a separate award for translation and, if applicable, the winner may choose a translator of his or her work into English to receive a prize of 15,000 pounds.

The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize in that it highlights one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.

The 2012 Man Booker prize was won by British author Hilary Mantel for "Bring Up the Bodies", the second novel in her ongoing trilogy set in the court of Henry VIII. She also won in 2009 for the first novel of the series "Wolf Hall".

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory A. Booker reacts during the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina September 4, 2012.

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Author Hilary Mantel poses with her book ''Wolf Hall'' after winning the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the Guildhall in London October 6, 2009.

LONDON | Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:56am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Hilary Mantel could become the first woman to win the coveted Man Booker Prize for fiction twice with her historical novel "Bring Up the Bodies", the bookmakers' favorite alongside Will Self's "Umbrella".

The annual literary award to an author from the Commonwealth, Zimbabwe or Ireland will be handed out at a glitzy dinner in London on Tuesday, and the build-up this year has been dominated by 60-year-old Mantel.

She won the Booker in 2009 with "Wolf Hall", her acclaimed 650-page historical novel charting Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in King Henry VIII's court, and is in contention again for the sequel.

Were she to win, she would become not only the first female the "do the double" but also the first British writer. South Africa-born J.M. Coetzee and Australian Peter Carey have won the prize twice.

"There has been discussion, I know, about the pros and cons of Mantel advancing so far in the prize again so soon," said Peter Stothard, chair of the Man Booker judging panel and editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

"The judges noted Mantel's even greater mastery of method now," he added.

Mantel could be back in the frame yet again in 2015, when the third and final installment of her Cromwell trilogy, "The Mirror and the Light", is due to hit the shelves.

"MOVING AND DRAINING"

The author has admitted that despite the trilogy's critical and commercial success so far, much was still riding on the final chapter of a 10-year writing odyssey.

"If I get the third book right then in a sense my whole life will have come right," she told Reuters in June. "But if I don't, then I am going to see it as a failure. In my mind it is all one long project."

Self's Umbrella was described by Stothard as "both moving and draining", a reference to some 400 pages without paragraph breaks or chapter divisions.

But he added that the tale about a misdiagnosed woman in a north London mental hospital would prove "much less difficult than at first it seems" to those who stuck with it.

Mantel and Self have taken turns at the top of bookmakers' betting lists.

Mantel edged out Self in odds offered by Paddy Power on Thursday with Bring Up the Bodies at 6/4 after leap-frogging Umbrella at 9/4.

But on Friday, Ladbrokes said Self had attracted a series of bets in the last two days making him 2/1 "hot" favorite ahead of Mantel at 5/2.

The other four shortlisted writers are Deborah Levy ("Swimming Home"), Malaysia's Tan Twan Eng ("The Garden of Evening Mists") and first-time novelists Alison Moore ("The Lighthouse") and Indian author Jeet Thayil ("Narcopolis").

The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives a cheque for 50,000 pounds ($80,000), international literary kudos and, perhaps most importantly, a significant spike in sales.

Research by the Guardian newspaper showed that Mantel's Wolf Hall, for example, sold 35,900 copies before the award was announced and nearly 600,000 afterwards.

The year before, Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" had sold just 5,703 copies before it won the Booker, rising nearly a hundredfold to 551,061 afterwards.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Steve Addison)

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