SOME of the novels that were submitted for this year’s Man Booker Prize amounted to “drivel”, one of the judges said yesterday.

Fiammetta Rocco, literary editor of The Economist, said: “There are many shades of drivel, if drivel can have shades, and we had to throw out a lot of books.”

Chris Smith, the chairman of this year’s judges and a former Culture Secretary, said of the books originally submitted: “Quite a number were not very good. I wish publishers would think twice before submitting those books for what is an important literary prize. Quite a few were surprisingly bad. There were quite a number that when I read them, I seriously wondered why they had been considered by someone as a possible contender.”

Other judges dismissed books among the 126 sent in for consideration as “really dreadful” and “technically flawed”. Some “simply didn’t work”.

The judges spoke out after announcing that three previous nominees — Alan Hollinghurst, David Mitchell and Colm Tóibín — had been shortlisted for a second time for the £50,000 award, along with Achmat Dangor, Sarah Hall and Gerard Woodward.

In the shortlist of works, by British, Irish and South African writers, Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas was made 5-4 favourite to land the prize that guarantees instant literary acclaim. He is closely followed by Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, a satire on Britain under Margaret Thatcher.

In betting terms, the prize has been a two-horse race since the 22-strong long list was announced last month. Dangor’s Bitter Fruit, a portrait of modern South Africa, was made the complete outsider of the field, at 12-1.

Although critical of some of the entries for this year’s prize, the judges lavished praise on the six shortlisted books. They read 132 novels in all, 115 of them submitted by publishers.

Each year publishers are invited to submit two books for the prize. Every former Booker Prize winner and any author who has appeared on the shortlist in the past ten years is also eligible. This time the judges called in a further 17 books — including one that made it on to the shortlist, Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo, about a boy who grows up in the Lancashire seaside resort of Morecambe Bay.

Over a two-hour session they arrived at the shortlist. It was a unanimous decision.

Mr Smith said: “This is an exceptionally strong shortlist. All of these books would stand contention with the Booker winners over the years.”

On hearing of the judges’ criticism of books submitted for the Booker, Martin Higgs, the literary editor at Waterstone’s, said that publishers should be more “self-selecting in what they send”.

He was among many who said that this was going to be a battle between the three former Booker nominees: “I don’t think we’ve felt for years such a clear sense of who might win,” he said.

Eyebrows had been raised when works by acclaimed authors such as V. S. Naipaul were left off the long list.

Mr Smith said: “We have been criticised for missing off well-established authors. We considered their books very carefully indeed but did not feel they measured up to the quality of books that we did put on the long list.”

The winner receives £50,000 and recognition worldwide. Since winning the prize last year, Vernon God Little, by D. B. C. Pierre, has sold nearly half a million copies and is being translated into 30 languages.

The Booker Prize was set up in 1969 to reward merit and encourage an interest in high-quality contemporary fiction. In 2002 the Man Group became its new sponsor.

This year’s winner will be announced on October 19 at a ceremony in the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster that will be televised live by the BBC.

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