Ian McEwan and Jonathan Franzen are among the heavyweight names on the 125-strong long-list of authors competing for the Impac literary award.

McEwan's Atonement, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize last year, and Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, are two of the favourites as voted for by librarians from across the world, who draw up the long-list.

Franzen's The Corrections has been hailed a masterpiece

Other notable candidates include James Ellroy's The Cold Six Thousand, Don Delillo's The Body Artist, John Irving's The Fourth Hand, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, and Isabel Allende's Portrait in Sepia.

The winner will be chosen by a panel of distinguished critics and writers and will receive 100,000 euros (�64,000), making the prize the world's biggest award for a novel.

Nationalities

The longlist includes works translated from Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, French, Croatian, Chinese, Portuguese, Czech, Norwegian, Japanese, Turkish, Hebrew and Galician.

There are works by authors from 31 different nationalities, 29 of whom are American, 20 English and five Irish.

Isabel Allende is one of the world's most successful and respected writers

English writers shortlisted include Nick Hornby, for How to be Good, David Lodge for Thinks..., Sebastian Faulks, for On Green Dolphin Street, and Anita Brookner, for The Bay of Angels.

The Corrections has been hailed as one of the first great works of literature of the new millennium and has already won the US National Book Award.

McEwan's novel Atonement has been in the running for several major awards but has lost out on the Booker and Whitbread prizes.

Last year, Michel Houellebecq won for Atomised while other winners include Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief and the English writers, Nicola Barker for Wide Open and Andrew Miller for his first novel Ingenious Pain (1999).

The shortlist will be unveiled on 20 March and the winner will be announced on 19 May, 2003.