LONDON, Oct 17: Anna Burns from Northern Ireland has won the 2018 Man Booker Prize for her third novel "Milkman". She won the much coveted 50,000 pound award for her timely, troubles-set novel about a young woman being sexually harassed by a powerful man.
Burns, 56, became the first Northern Irish winner of the award and accepted the prize at a ceremony at Guildhall here late on Tuesday. She is also the first female winner since 2012, when Hilary Mantel took the award with "Bring Up the Bodies".
Booker's chair of judges, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, said that the novel is "incredibly original".
"Milkman" is narrated by an unnamed 18-year-old girl, known as "middle sister", who is being pursued by a much older paramilitary figure, the milkman.
"None of us has ever read anything like this before," said Appiah, announcing the prize. "Anna Burns' utterly distinctive voice challenges conventional thinking and form in a surprising and immersive prose. It is a story of brutality, sexual encroachment and resistance threaded with mordant humour."
Burns beat writers including American literary heavyweight Richard Powers, Canadian Esi Edugyan and Daisy Johnson, at 27 the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the award.
Burns, who was born in Belfast and now lives in East Sussex, drew on her own experiences growing up in what she called "a place that was rife with violence, distrust and paranoia". - IANS
