English Patient tops Booker 50-year poll

THE ENGLISH Patient has been crowned the best work of fiction from the last five decades of the Man Booker Prize.

Canadian author Michael Ondaatje’s novel originally won the prestigious award in 1992 and has now gone on to scoop the Golden Man Booker, a one-off accolade to mark the prize’s 50th anniversary.

A panel of five judges considered all 51 of the previous winners, before the top choice from each decade of the Man Booker was put to the public vote. The other finalists were In A Free State by VS Naipaul for the 70s, Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively for the 80s, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel for the 2000s and Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders for the 2010s.

The English Patient, which also inspired the Oscar-winning 1996 film from late director Anthony Minghella, is set at the end of the Second World War and revolves around the identity of a badly burned patient.