The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

« Headlines

Anne Enright wins the Booker

17.10.07

Anne Enright has been named the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for her novel The Gathering, published by Jonathan Cape. She beat favourtes Ian McEwan and Lloyd Jones.

It is the 15th time the prize has been won by a Random House author. Gail Rebuck, chief executive of the Random House Group UK, said: "I am absolutely delighted that Anne Enright’s The Gathering has been awarded The Booker Prize." She added: "Anne's win is particularly special given we have been working with her since she was a fledgling author, it is extremely gratifying to see her work recognised at such a high level within the literary world." 

Chair of the judges, Howard Davies, made the announcement, which was broadcast live on the BBC Ten O’ Clock News, at the awards dinner at the Guildhall, London. Davies said: "The Gathering is an unflinching look at a grieving family. It’s the bleakness of one woman’s vision, a bleakness rooted in her family, her marriage and the death of her brother."

Enright herself told Radio 4's Today programme this morning: "When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case they shouldn't really pick up my book. It's the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie".

The Guardian has the detail on the final deliberations: The judging process was, Davies said, "tight". Every book "had its advocate". He described the judges as "a congenial group of people" but not necessarily one from whom consensus easily flowed. Accordingly, as befitted the director of the London School of Economics, he devised what he called an ingenious selection of voting systems: a weighted system, a simple ranking system and single transferable vote. Each confirmed Enright as the winner.

The Man Booker judges took two-and-a-half hours to pick this year's winner.

The Telegraph reckons that Enright's victory is a major upset that is likely to fuel increasing criticism that the prize, routinely hailed as the world's most prestigious award for literary fiction, is out of touch with ordinary readers. The piece enlists Robert Harris, a bestselling author never likely to be shortlisted for the prize, who says that authors are being forced by agents to write 'Booker-winning' novels that were "grim and unreadable and utterly off-putting for many readers". He went on: "They are elegant, elegiac but dull and dry. They do not connect with their readers. They bare just deadening to read."

 

Guardian

The Booker Prize Prize Anne Enright