Philip Roth wins Man Booker prize
Hailed for his body of work which spans 50 years, Roth defeated 13 eminent contenders to take out the STG60,000 ($A91,750) prize, announced at the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday.
"His imagination has not only recast our idea of Jewish identity, it has also re-animated fiction, and not just American fiction, generally," chief judge Dr Rick Gekoski said.
Roth, who was born in New Jersey in 1933 and now lives in Connecticut, could not travel to Australia to attend, due to back problems.
"I hope, in general, to bring more attention to readers around the world who are not familiar with my work," he said in a video message.
Best known for his 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint, and for his late 1990s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998) and The Human Stain (2000), Roth's most recent book, Nemesis, was published in 2010.
Amont the finalists he beat to take out the prize were John le Carre, Philip Pullman and Australia's David Malouf.
Mr Gekoski said the judges hoped they had selected an author whose work would still be relevant in 100 years time.
"I can't think of anybody who has written what I think are masterpieces 50 years apart," he said.
"I can think of very few novelists who get better and better by going through middle age."
The Man Booker International prize is awarded every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language.
This year, Chinese writers featured in the final list for the first time, including Wang Anyi, who wrote the 1996 novel The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, which was translated into English.
Previous winners have included Ismail Kadare in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009.
Source:theage
Posts
