Canada's Michael Ondaatje up for best-ever Booker Prize accolade

Canadian author Michael Ondaatjeisone offive contenders for the title of greatest-ever winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction.

Ondaatje'smultilayered romanceThe English Patientis goingup against:

• Wolf Hall by Britain's Hilary Mantel.
• Lincoln in theBardo byAmerican George Saunders.
• Moon Tiger byBritain's Penelope Lively.
• In a FreeStateby Trinidad-born Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul.

The list of finalists for the Golden Man Booker Prize created in celebration of the prestigious award's 50th anniversary was announced Saturday.

A panel of judges selected one book from each decade since the prize was founded in 1969. A public vote will decide the ultimate winner, to be announced July 8.

The prize was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Americans also have been eligible since 2014.

In addition to winning the Man Booker Prize in 1992, The English Patient won the Governor General's Literary Award. Set during the Italian campaign of the Second World War, it follows the lives of four characters, including a badly burned man, the English patient, whose life and romance unfolds in a series of flashbacks.