KEY POINTS:
Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe and Margaret Atwood are among 15 authors selected as finalists for the Man Booker International Prize.
It differs from the regular Booker Prize because it is available to fiction writers of any nationality as long as their work is written in or translated into English.
The others are John Banville, Peter Carey, Don DeLillo, Carlos Fuentes, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Harry Mulisch, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Amos Oz, Philip Roth and Michel Tournier.
