Novelist Julian Barnes wins the 2011 Man Booker Prize
by sernabad
Novelist Julian Barnes won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending. The announcement, made at an awards ceremony last night at London's Guildhall, was broadcast on the BBC.
The Man Booker Prize which is 43 years old, ...aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland."
Barnes, the odds-on favorite when the shortlist was released September 6, had been shortlisted three previous times.
His winning fiction is the story of a middle-aged man, satisfied in his retirement/post-divorce life, that is, until childhood friends surface to roil his complacency.
The Man Booker Prize judges took a fair amount of heat for their choices this year when they announced that readability and enjoyment were being given more weight than literary excellence in their selections. Barnes' surprisingly short entry (just 168 pages) just may satisfy all readers.
The Man Booker Prize purse is £50,000.
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