A Man Booker Prize nominee, an award-winning poet, and a best-selling American author are among the writers shortlisted for Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are the only major British book awards judged by scholars and students of Literature and are awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh for the best work of fiction and the best biography published during the previous year.

A Man Booker Prize nominee, an award-winning poet, and a best-selling American author are among the writers shortlisted for Britain's oldest literary award, announced today (Monday, April 28).

The five novels competing for the £10,000 fiction prize are: Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben;The Devil's Footprints by John Burnside; The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid; A Far Country by Daniel Mason and Salvage by Gee Williams.

Contenders for the biography prize include fascinating accounts on two influential names from the Victorian age - philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill, and architect Augustus Pugin who designed the Houses of Parliament - as well as a book about blues singer Blind Willie McTell, novelist Edith Wharton and Joseph Stalin's early years.

The shortlisted works for the biography section, also with a £10,000 prize are: Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray; God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill; Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee;Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore; John Stuart Mill:Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves.

Past winners have included D.H.Lawrence, E.M. Forster, Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan. Last year's winners were Cormac McCarthy for The Road and Byron Rogers for The Man who Went into the West: The Life of R.S.Thomas.

The broadcaster James Naughtie will announce the winners at a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August. Naughtie is one of four honorary Edinburgh graduates on the advisory committee for the awards, along with crime writer Ian Rankin, best-selling author Alexander McCall-Smith, and the Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Catherine Lockerbie.

The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her deceased husband's love of good books.