'The English Patient' wins public poll of Man Booker

India News Stream Netwrok
July 9, 2018
London: Best selling novel ”The English Patent”, penned by Sri Lankan-born Canadian author Michael Ondaatje has been adjudged best winner of the Booker prize of the last 50 years.

Ondaatje, speaking at the close of the Man Booker 50 festiva in Southbank Centre London, said he had not reread the novel ” which moves between a nurse tending a horribley burned man in an Italian villa at the end of the second world war and a tragic love affair from his past,” the Guardian reported.

The Golden Booker was held this year to mark 50 successful years of the much coveted literary prize.

”The English Patent is a compelling work of fiction–both poetic and philosophical–and a worth winner of the Golden Man Booker,” Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation Baroness Helena Kennedy said.

The novel won the 1992 Booker Prize and the 1992 Governor General’s Award. It was adapted into a 1996 film by Anthony Minghella. The film is also a recepient of nine Academy Awards — including Best Picture and Director — at the 69th Academy Awards.

The Novel was selected from out of the works of all 52 winners of the award, with each assigned a decade from the Booker’s history.

VS Naipaul’s In a Free State, Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf, and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo were the other four of the five works shortlisted. The five books were then put to a public vote.

The English Patient was novelist Kamila Shamsie’s selection from the 1990s.

The five books were then put to a public vote.

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