So what name will it be when the Booker prize judges' chairman, British Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, stands on the podium in London's Guildhall on Monday night at exactly 8.18 p.m. (the organisers make it sound like Cape Canaveral) and reveals who's going to walk away with the £20,000? All eyes here will inevitably be on the Irish contender, Colm Toibin, and anyone with access to Channel 4 can watch it all live with commentary by Melvyn Bragg and Muriel Grey.
This year, in an effort to make the show - and the prize - "more accessible and exciting" and "to subject the Booker shortlist to the full rigour of popular scrutiny", according to TV producer Ed Braman, Channel 4 has teamed up with Waterstone's. They'll have a people's jury, who've read the books, on hand to discuss the shortlist - and then the winner - at the bookstore's Picadilly flagship. The bookchain also conducted a readers' poll with the TV station via its websites, asking readers what have been their books of the year. These results will also be announced on Monday.
In addition to Toibin, the other contenders are Ahdaf Soueif, J. M. Coetzee, Anita Desai, Andrew O'Hagan and Michael Frayn.
Meanwhile the usual debate rages in the media: is the Booker all hype? Do the best books necessarily win? Do publishers actively look for Booker potentials instead of good books? Despite all the chestnut-chewing, it's still the hottest prize this side of the Atlantic and readers everywhere will be dying to see what happens on Monday night.
It's not quite the Booker, but it certainly has world-class writers as judges. Fish Publishing in Durrus, Co Cork, has announced the details of its sixth annual short story prize. The best 15 stories will be published in an anthology next April. Judges this year are William Wharton, best-known for Birdy; the multi-disciplined Dermot Bolger; and Julia Darling, a previous Fish Prizewinner.
First prize is £1,000. There are two second prizes: a week at the Anam Cara Writers' Retreat at Eyeries, so you can sit down and write more stories and hope to make the Booker shortlist next year; and a weekend residential writing workshop in Dingle, so you can hone those prize-winning skills and brag to everyone else about why you're there.
Stories must be previously unpublished, not longer than 5,000 words and accompanied by an £8 fee - with further entries at £5 each. Closing date is November 30th. Send an stamped addressed envelope for more details to Fish Publishing, Durrus, Bantry, Co Cork - or email fishpublishing@tinet.ie
Random House's catalogue announces new books from several Irish writers. Due in February are novels from Mary Morrissy and Philip Davison - The Pretender and McKenzie's Friend respectively. Morrissy's novel is the fictional story of the woman who claimed to be the Romanov, Anastasia. In his novel, Davison continues the story of his character, Harry Fielding.
In March, two novels are due out - What Are You Like? by Anne Enright and The Little Hammer by John Kelly. Enright's locations in her novel about twins are Dublin, New York and London: it's the story of "two women, both haunted by their missing selves," says the bumf. Kelly's novel features Prague, Elvis Presley, Shirley Temple, the Pope, murder - and Bundoran. Bound to be something there for everyone in the audience.
It's back to Donegal again in June for Joseph O'Connor's comic novel, Inishowen. Kelly and O'Connor - or the copywriters - seem to have revelled in juxtaposing Donegal with some very odd scenarios. Mao Zedong turns up, albeit in the form of a tattoo, a teenage boy speaks only in vowels, and there's also a New York plastic surgeon with a phobia about buying trousers. Watch out for their alter egos in the hills of Donegal.
When Sarah Flannery (17) won the Esat Young Scientist of the Year Award in January, she astonished people around the world with her project on an encoding system for electronic information. Last month, she also picked up first prize at the 11th European Union Contest for Young Scientists.
Her project attracted international approaches from universities, banks and, of course, computer companies. Money was offered, a cool $23 million in one case. And all the time Sarah was - and is - still at school in Blarney, Co Cork.
What makes someone like this tick? Next spring Profile Books in London will let us know with the publication of Incode: A Mathematical Journey, the working title of Sarah's remarkable sceal so far. She's writing it with a collaborative input from her father, David.
Expect intriguing insights into the workings of an exceptionally agile young mind. When other small children clamoured for bedtime stories, Sarah was asking her father for new puzzles to solve by way of her pre-pushing-up-the-zeds diversion.
Profile predicts a huge success and hopes that the book will popularise science in the way that Sophie's Choice made philosophy "accessible" to many previously uninterested in the subject.