David took on Goliath yesterday when novice authors found themselves up against two literary heavyweights on the longlist of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

At the age of 33 Edward Docx became the youngest author to be nominated for the £50,000 award.

The veterans Ian McEwan and A. N. Wilson are also among the 13 contenders. The judges described Docx’s second book, Self Help, as a “very ambitious novel . . . a persuasive picture of life in Russia post the collapse of communism”.

Peter Ho Davies, Nikita Lalwani, Catherine O’Flynn and Tan Twan Eng are first-timers finding recognition.

Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics and chairman of this year’s Booker judges, said that not one of the newcomers’ books read like a “try-out”. Nor, he added, had any of then been selected as “a good first try”. These are novels that match the best of the rest, he said.

Drawing up the list took more than six hours — allowing for a long lunch, through which the judges determinedly avoided discussing books.

McEwan, who won the prize in 1998, was immediately installed as the bookies’ favourite for On Chesil Beach, a short, wistful novel about a love affair that does not end happily. William Hill placed him as the 3-1 most likely winner.

Graham Sharpe, its spokesman, who has been compiling Booker odds for a quarter of a century, said: “It is a worthy favourite and probably one of the best Booker contenders of recent years.”

In previous years, there have been longlists of between 18 and 24 titles. This time the organisers decided to limit it to a “Man Booker dozen” — ie, a baker’s dozen — to focus attention more clearly on the frontrunners.

The judges — the poet Wendy Cope; Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland, which became a Bafta-winning film; the biographer and critic Ruth Scurr; and the actress Imogen Stubbs — made their selection from about 110 entries spanning more than 35,000 pages.

Sir Howard, said: “Judging the Man Booker Prize is a marathon, not a sprint. Even at a brisk 80 pages an hour, that represents 437 hours at the typeface.

“It would be idle to pretend that all 35,000 pages will stay in the memory, and there are certainly longueurs, but on this showing the English novel is alive and well.”

The Booker — which was first awarded in 1969, with the Man Group as the new sponsor of the prize in 2002 — rewards the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.

This year’s shortlist will be announced on September 6, and the overall winner on October 16.

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