London: Promising writer Monica Ali is the lone Asian novelist left in the shortlist for the 2003 Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious annual fiction award worth 50,000 Pounds.

A new generation of women authors dominated the shortlist of six. The list includes four women, three debut novelists and only one writer who could be described as a household name – Margaret Atwood.

Atwood's 'Onyx and Crake' was the early favourite, but she was immediately challenged by Monica Ali, the Bangladeshi-born Londoner, whose 'Brick Lane' was hailed by the judges as "an extraordinary first novel".

Others reaching the list with their first published books were the British music teacher Clare Morrall and the Australian-born D B C Pierre, 42, who lives in Ireland. The list is completed by Zoe Heller and Damon Galgut.

Those who failed to make the cut included the heavyweights, Martin Amis, J M Coetzee and Graham Swift.

35-year-old Ali was born in Dhaka and moved to the North of England with her family shortly after. The former Oxford student secured a 200,000 Pounds advance on the strength of the first six chapters of her book, which tells the story of a Bangladeshi girl who comes to England for an arranged marriage and has to adapt to life in an East End Tower Block.

PTI