Booker prize may expand to include US

The Booker Prize, that unassailable bastion of British literature, is to undergo a cosmopolitan makeover which could see American authors competing for the prestigious award by 2004.

The Booker Prize, that unassailable bastion of British literature, is to undergo a cosmopolitan makeover which could see American authors competing for the prestigious award by 2004.

An international stockbroking company unveiled yesterday as the new sponsor of the highbrow literary accolade in a £2.5m deal wants to expand its remit across the Atlantic.

The move, which is likely to leave literary traditionalists spluttering, comes as the 33-year-old prize faces competition from other corporate-sponsored awards such as the Whitbread and Orange awards.

The Booker, whose previous winners range from Salman Rushdie to Roddy Doyle, is currently restricted to writers in English from Britain and the Commonwealth. But under a planned revamp, both the prize organisers and the new sponsor, the London-based Man Group, are set to open the door to additional talent from New York to Los Angeles.

A spokesman for the Man Group, which last year made a profit of £174m but is largely unknown outside financial circles, said: "We want both to preserve the integrity of the prize and develop it. There is an appetite for the whole reach and range of the award to be reconsidered. We are looking particularly at bringing America into the picture."

Sources involved with the five-year sponsorship deal said it was hoped a widened award, known as the Man Booker Prize, would be introduced within the next two or three years. Among the formats understood to be under consideration are a unified prize for literature from the English-speaking world or a separate Booker North America award.

A multi-lingual award for Western Europe, another important market for the Man Group, has also been mooted.

Critics of the Booker, won last year by Peter Carey for his True History of the Kelly Gang, have long argued that it must look further afield if it is to keep its standing as Europe's premier fiction prize.

Organisers of the Booker have also had to weather a number of controversies about the judging, amid allegations that it operates as a closed shop of London-based literati. The novelist and sometime Booker judge AL Kennedy last year branded it a "pile of crooked nonsense" and said her fellow panellists had failed to read the 300 books on the long list.

The new Booker Prize Foundation, which is now in charge of running the award, confirmed it was looking to broaden its scope. A spokeswoman said: "We want to develop internationally... there are no firm plans but in principle we agree there is scope."

Organisers of the Booker were forced to change its structure after the frozen food retailer Iceland bought Booker, the cash-and-carry retailer which has sponsored the prize since it was founded in 1969.

The supermarket chain decided it would not foot the £300,000 bill to run the Booker as it was no longer using the name for commercial activities.

There is one immediate and distinctly Yankee addition to the prize – under the new sponsorship deal, the winning author will win £50,000, more than double the previous level.