Spare a thought for the five Booker Prize judges.

The judges who live in the UK and USA, have had to read all 158 eligible novels at a rate of about one novel per day.

What was novel seven I read? Beats me.

They then create a long list and then a short-list. How they do that is a secret only the Druids know.

The judging panel is chaired by historian Maya Jasanoff and includes twice Booker-shortlisted novelist and professor Chigozie Obioma and writer and former Archbishop Rowan Williams.

“We had each been absorbed in our own little isolated bubbles, in this unique process — and then [in judging meetings] we got to see the only other four people in the world who had experienced exactly the same thing,” Jasanoff said.

Whether they had experienced exactly the same thing is a philosophical point but let’s carry on.

These poor bastards then have to re-read the 13 longlisted novels.

The shortlist is here.

They will then re-read the shortlisted novels yet again, before choosing a winner.

Maya Jasanoff has given us a precis of some of the novels.

“Some are acutely introspective, taking us into the mind of a Tamil man tracing the scars of Sri Lanka’s civil war, and an American woman unplugging from the internet to cope with a family crisis. Some enter communities in the throes of historical transformation: the Cardiff docklands in the early years of British decolonisation, and the veld around Pretoria in the last years of apartheid. And some have global sweep, following a mid-century aviator in her attempt to circumnavigate the planet, and a present-day astrobiologist raising a son haunted by climate change.”

Load up on Xanax as there are some thigh slappers there.

The 2021 winner of The Booker Prize will be announced on Wednesday, November 3.

Personally, I’d save your money and spend it on Guy Fawkes night on November 5.