Madeleine Thien's story of revolutionary China favourite to win Man Booker Prize
A book about a young Chinese woman who flees to Canada in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests is the favourite to be handed this year's Man Booker Prize.
The Duchess of Cornwall, an avid reader, will present the prestigious literary award to the winner at a ceremony in London - the fourth time she has handed over the prize.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing, the third novel from Canadian author Madeleine Thien and the favourite to pick up the prize, follows 10-year-old Marie and her mother after they invite Ai-Ming into their home following her escape from post-Mao China.
Ai-Ming recounts the story of her family in revolutionary China to Marie - from the first days of Mao's ascent to the demonstrations of 1989.
The daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants to Canada, Thien has previously won the Frankfurt Book Fair's LiBeraturpreis.
Do Not Say We Have Nothing is the bookies' favourite at 7/4 to win the award and the £50,000 prize money ahead of second-time nominee Deborah Levy (11/4) and Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet (4/1) at a prize ceremony on Tuesday evening.
Macrae Burnet is shortlisted for His Bloody Project, a crime story and memoir exploring the life of a 19th century crofter.
The 48-year-old author recounts the murders, in 1869, of three people in a remote crofting community and the subsequent trial of 17-year-old Roderick Macrae, one of the writer's ancestors.
Levy is the only previously shortlisted author after Swimming Home was named in 2012.
Her novel, Hot Milk, "examines female rage and sexuality as well as the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood".
The shortlist also features debut novelist Ottessa Moshfegh (Eileen), fellow US author Paul Beatty (The Sellout), and Canadian-British writer David Szalay (All That Man Is).
The Sellout is described by judges as a "satire worthy of Jonathan Swift", while All That Man Is features nine men "striving to understand just what it means to be alive" and Eileen is about a "disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's carer and her day job as a secretary at a boys' prison".
