The argument about whether US writers should be allowed to compete for the Man Booker Prize rumbles on this week with news that some two dozen British publishers have put their name to a letter urging the prize trustees to reverse the 2014 rule change.

Under the old system, only novels from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth could enter. But in recent years the prize's branding has become more grandiose; continuing to exclude writers from the largest English-language market might have made the prize's tagline – "fiction at its finest" – ring hollow.

But side by side with their transatlantic counterparts, British novels can seem modest. Would the 1996 winner Graham Swift's Last Orders have stood a chance against David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, published that year? Or Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, winner in 1997, against Don DeLillo's Underworld?

In turning this parlour game into a prize...