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The Man Booker Prize has been criticised over the years for selecting dark, unreadable and worthy tomes unlike the winners of other more populist literary prizes.

Now, in the week that Anne Enright became its 2007 winner, it is shaking off criticisms of being elitist and out of touch by taking the radical step of placing all its shortlisted novels online, available free to anyone worldwide.

Negotiations are under way with the British Council and publishers over digitising the novels and reaching parts - particularly in Africa and Asia - that the actual books would not otherwise reach.

Jonathan Taylor, chairman of The Booker Prize Foundation, said that the initiative was well advanced, although details were still being thrashed out.

The downloads will not impact on sales, it is thought. If readers like a novel tasted on the internet, they may just be inspired to buy the actual book.

Hearing about the initiative from The Times yesterday, Robin Robertson, deputy publishing director of Jonathan Cape – Enright’s publisher – likened it to Radiohead’s experiment this month in which the new album, Rainbows, became downloadable on an “honesty box” basis. An internet survey of 3,000 people who downloaded the album found that most paid an average of £4, although others claiming to have paid more than £40.

Mr Robertson thought that a partial reproduction rather than an entire book was preferable. The news emerged as Enright, a 45-year-old Dubliner, became the 2007 winner of one of literature’s most prestigious awards for her bleak Irish family saga, The Gathering.

The latest British figures from Nielsen BookScan show that, since it was published in May, only 3,306 copies have been sold in hardback, with a further 381 in paperback. Enright’s publisher said that the actual figure was 35,000, including sales in Europe. Winning the Booker will also do wonders for sales. Enright’s sales may now quadruple, at least.

“We found it a very powerful, uncomfortable and even, at times, angry book,” Sir Howard Davies, chairman of the judges, said after picking the book on Tuesday night. “It is an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language.”

He added: “I think you people will find this a very readable and satisfying novel.”

That was not quite what a lollipop lady, a builder’s yard worker and other locals from the Scottish village of Comrie thought of the novel when presented with the shortlisted books by the BBC, for a Culture Show documentary screened last weekend.

Sara Tiefenbrun, its director, said that they asked regular readers and those who had not touched a book for years to comment on them.

If Conway’s inhabitants had been judging the prize, they would have chosen The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a story about a Westernised middle-class Pakistani man whose life is changed after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Tiefenbrun said: “It came out on top because they found it had a gripping narrative and unusual story . . . very much a story of our times. The Gathering didn’t go down well. The Booker judges decided it was ‘accessible’. That’s not what our people found. They found it jumped about, the narrative wasn’t linear and it was quite confusing and gloomy.”

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