Novel about Troubles wins Booker
Canadian was among six writers vying for prestigious fiction prize
LONDON In a move that confounded the odds from most of those laying bets, Anna Burns has won the prestigious 2018 Man Booker Prize for Milkman, her story of family, community and violence set during Northern Ireland’s deadly Troubles.
The winner was announced Tuesday during a ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.
Canadian author Esi Edugyan was among the six nominees for her novel Washington Black, a story about a slave who escapes from a sugar plantation in a hotair balloon.
Other nominees for the prize worth more than $85,000, which has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers, were U.S. writer Richard Powers for his novel The Overstory, which had been likened to a Moby Dick story about trees; British author Daisy Johnson’s Greek tragedy-inspired family saga Everything Under; U.S. novelist Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, about a woman serving life in prison; and Robin Robertson’s The Long Take, a verse novel about a traumatized D -Day veteran journeying through troubled postwar U.S. cities.
The prize, subject to intense speculation and lively betting, usually brings the victor a huge boost in sales and profile.
Bookmaker Ladbrokes had said The Overstory was the favourite to win, followed by Washington Black and Everything Under, with Johnson’s book closing the gap thanks to a late flurry of bets. At 28, Johnson would have been the youngest-ever Booker laureate if she had won.
This year’s judges had favoured new talent over more established names.
Of the six finalists, only Edugyan had been nominated before — for Half-Blood Blues in 2011 — and favourites including Canada’s Michael Ondaatje didn’t make the cut from the 13-novel long list.
Founded in 1969, the prize was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers.
U.S. writers have been eligible since 2014, and there have been two U.S. winners — Paul Beatty’s The Sellout in 2016 and George Saunders for Lincoln in the Bardo in 2017.