London: Australian author Richard Flanagan has been named as the winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize Tuesday night at London’s Guildhall for his novel of love and war ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction is Richard Flanagan with The Narrow Road to the Deep North #ManBooker2014pic.twitter.com/nYlJwHfD8s. Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) October 14, 2014
The novelist, who became the third Australian to win the Man Booker for fiction was presented with his award at Guildhall, which comes with a £50,000 ($79,530) cheque, by Prince Charles’s wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
For the first time in the British prestigious literary award’s 46-year history, this was the first year that the Man Booker Prize had been opened to all authors of any nationality, writing in English and having their work published in Britain.
The other contestants on the shortlist were US authors Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, and British authors Howard Jacobson and Ali Smith. The book is Flanagan sixth novel and is dedicated “to prisoner san byaku san ju go”- a reference to his father’s Japanese prison number, 335.
Flanagan’s father was a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. He died at age 98, the day he completed his book. Flanagan was born in Tasmania in July, 1961. His previous novels include- Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish, The Unknown Terrorist and Wanting.
Bureau Report
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