'Beauty' before age: Zadie Smith beats veteran authors to a place on the Man Booker shortlist

Announcing the six contenders for the 2005 award, Professor John Sutherland, chairman of the judges, admitted there was enough talent on the 17-strong longlist for two shortlists in a triumphant year for British and Irish fiction.

Only one previous winner, Kazuo Ishiguro, 50, with Never Let Me Go, remained in contention for the prestigious prize after a two-hour debate. The Japanese-born writer who moved to Britain at the age of six, said he was "very flattered".

But it was Julian Barnes, 59, twice previously shortlisted, who was immediately installed as the bookmakers' favourite with Arthur & George, a work which relies heavily on a true-life story involving the writer Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sebastian Barry, 50, was shortlisted for A Long Long Way and said he was "properly gobsmacked" at his inclusion in a year hailed as possibly the best in Booker history. "From almost every angle it's astonishing," he said. "Quite frankly, I didn't know where I'd find a parking space. There were 17 cars and six parking spaces. But somebody has very kindly given me a space."

Other contenders are John Banville, 59, who lives in Dublin, for his novel The Sea. He said he was surprised and extremely pleased, adding: "I didn't envy the judges their task this year. Obviously the novel is far from dead."

He joins Inverness-born Ali Smith, 43, shortlisted for The Accidental. Both writers have been shortlisted before.

Zadie Smith was the final name on the list with her third novel, On Beauty. At 29, she is the youngest of the six by some margin. She has been living and working in America and, in an interview with the latest New Yorker magazine, condemns British culture and its "general stupidity, madness, vulgarity" as "disgusting".

Professor Sutherland said: "A lot of very strong novels had regretfully to be excluded. There's no discredit not to be on this shortlist. The current view of British fiction, in my view, is immensely strong, immensely healthy, and one of the glories of our civilisation." If Britain could make cars as it produces novelists, it would beat the Japanese, he said.

The omission of Coetzee's Slow Man and Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black were also mentioned as particular regrets though Josephine Hart, the novelist and judge, stressed: "We were just."

David Sexton, a literary editor and one of the judges, said an indication of the strength of the year was the exclusion from the shortlist of McEwan's novel Saturday, which had been highly favoured by many. "You might think that Saturday is a stronger work than Amsterdam which won the Booker [in 1998]."

The winner will be announced on 10 October.

Literary editor Boyd Tonkin gives his verdict

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Ishiguro sends in the clones in his eerie school-story parable about children bred and farmed as organ donors. In adulthood, Kathy looks back in bewilderment on the hideous experiment in the dream-like, otherworldly idiom that Ishiguro has made his own. Mysterious and elusive, this novel shows in spades the enigmatic control of voice and emotion that this year's jurors seem to admire beyond all else.

William Hill odds: 3/1

Zadie Smith, On Beauty

Inspired by E M Forster (Howards End above all), Zadie Smith also draws with glee on the funds of satire and farce built up by the tradition of the campus novel. At an East Coast college, two rival clans of academics tussle over sex, art and politics. By a mile, it's the most exuberant and enjoyable novel on the list, although Smith gives her galloping talent an easy ride with some soft targets and familiar settings.

William Hill odds: 4/1

Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way

For many readers, this will be the one memorable discovery on a somewhat stuffy shortlist. Barry (another Dubliner) takes the well-trodden fictional paths of the 1916 Easter Rising and the killing fields of the First World War. Through the turmoil and terror that Willie Dunne endures, Barry brings new life to this material with a well-directed force of language and feeling that led The Independent to hail "a small masterpiece".

William Hill odds: 8/1

John Banville, The Sea

Precious and refined to the point of anaemia, the overwrought prose and enigmatic plots of John Banville appeal to the kind of fogeyish sensibility that clearly looms large on this year's panel. The Dublin mandarin novelist sends a widowed aesthete back to the seaside town where, as a child, he fell in love with an exotically attractive family, in a coldly artful meditation on the ravages of love and time.

William Hill odds: 10/1

Ali Smith, The Accidental

In Smith's work the writer always looks in the mirror and reflects on the nature of fiction. The Accidental keeps this habit of self-interrogation but hitches it to a plot that joins elements of sitcom and myth. An alluring stranger arrives to wreck the lives of a smug but screwy family in a Norfolk cottage. Amber trails plenty of clever, comic energy in her wake, but Smith can never shut the door on self-consciousness.

William Hill odds: 12/1

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George

A faultlessly crafted documentary novel. Scrupulously sticking to the record, while exploring the boundaries of truth and fiction, Barnes resurrects the case of the half-Indian George Edalji, a Midlands solicitor and vicar's son falsely imprisoned for mutilating horses. Cue the entry of the tormented literary lion Conan Doyle, whose own investigations led to George's pardon and helped to set up the Court of Appeal.

William Hill odds: 5/4 fav