Posted on July 9, 2018 at 9:06 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Michael Ondaatje may have had to share the Man Booker Prize glory in 1992, but he finally reigned supreme this past Sunday.
His novel The English Patient was announced last night as the winner of the Golden Booker — a public poll celebrating the past fifty years of the literature prize.
A panel of judges re-read the fifty-two novels that had won the award and submitted a finalist from each decade. Those finalists were put forth to a public vote.
Ondaatje was quick to demur and praise other authors, however.
“Not for a second do I believe this is the best book on the list, especially when it is placed beside a work by VS Naipaul, one of the masters of our time, or a major work like Wolf Hall,” he said, according to The Guardian.
The English Patient is the story of the intersection of four damaged lives in an abandoned Italian villa at the end of World War II.
It was adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, and Kristin Scott Thomas.
Read the full story on The Guardian’s website.
Categories: Today in Books