Ulster tale captures Man Booker prize
Anna Burns is first winner from Northern Ireland
LONDON — Anna Burns won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with Milkman, a vibrant, violent story about men, women, conflict and power set during Northern Ireland’s years of Catholic-Protestant violence.
Burns is the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the 50,000-pound (about $85,000 Cdn) prize, which is open to Englishlanguage authors from around the world. She received her trophy from the Duchess of Cornwall during a black-tie ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.
Milkman is narrated by a young woman dealing with an older man who uses family ties, social pressure and political loyalties as weapons of sexual coercion and harassment. It is set in the 1970s, but was published amid the global eruption of sexual misconduct allegations that sparked the MeToo movement.
“I think this novel will help people to think about MeToo, and I like novels that help people think about current movements and challenges,” said philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who chaired the judging panel.
“But we think it’ll last. It’s not just about something that’s going on in this moment. I think it’s a very powerful novel about the damage and danger of rumour.”
Burns beat five other novelists, including the bookmakers’ favourites: American Richard Powers’ eco-epic The Overstory and Colwood-based Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, the story of a slave who escapes from a sugar plantation in a hot-air balloon. Edugyan’s novel is also short-listed for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, for Canadian writers, which will be awarded next month.
The other finalists were U.S. novelist Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, set in a women’s prison; Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, a verse novel about a traumatized D-Day veteran; and 27-year-old British author Daisy Johnson’s Greek tragedy-inspired family saga Everything Under.
Founded in 1969, the Man Booker Prize was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers. Americans have been eligible since 2014. There have been two American winners — Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in 2016 and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo in 2017.
A third consecutive American victor would have revived fears among some U.K. writers and publishers that the prize is becoming too U.S.-centric. But Appiah said neither the nationality nor the gender of the authors was a factor in the judges’ deliberations on the shortlist of four female and two male authors.
The Man Booker has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers, and the one who will emerge from the field to beat other finalists is always subject to intense speculation and lively betting. Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Hilary Mantel.
It’s likely to bring a big boost to Burns, 56, who has two previous published novels. Milkman appears as a continuous torrent with few paragraph marks, which has led some to label it experimental and challenging.