It's never been done before, but you'd be a hardy fellow to bet against British novelist Hilary Mantel after her novel Bring up the Bodies made the shortlist for the 2012 Booker Prize, giving her the chance to become the first author to take the prestigious literary prize twice. According to The Independent, Mantel's sequel to her 2009-winning effort Wolf Hall was among the first six books named today for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction today at a press conference in London. As well as winning in 2009, her novel Beyond Black made the long list for the 2005 award.

She's going to have a tough battle on her hands if she does want to make history though; Will Self is among those in with a chance, with his book Umbrella also finding inclusion, and Sir Peter Stothard, who is the chair of judges and editor of The Times Literary Supplement called he and Mantel "Two of the established radicals of contemporary literature." There were also two debut novels in the list, Alison Moore's The Lighthouse and Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis, with Deborah Levy's Swimming Home and Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists rounding out the list.

Discussing the final six, Stothard commented "We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose - and in the visible confidence of the novel's place in forming our words and ideas."