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Man Booker Prize 2018 winner: Anna Burns becomes first Northern Irish author to win prestigious award for 'Milkman'

The author was praised for having an 'utterly distinctive voice that challenges conventional thinking'

Jack Shepherd
Tuesday 16 October 2018 22:19 BST
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2018 Man Booker Prize winner announced: Milkman by Anna Burns

Anna Burns has become the first Northern Irish author to win the Man Booker prize with Milkman.

Set in an unnamed city during The Troubles, the story follows an 18-year-old girl as she navigates her way through the rumours and social pressures that come from living in a tight-knit community in conflicted times.

The book has been praised for resonating with the current #MeToo climate as the protagonist gets aggressively pursued by an older, more powerful male.

“I hope this novel will help people think about #MeToo,” head judge Kwame Anthony Appiah said of the winning book. “The novel is to be commended giving us a deep and subtle and challenging – intellectually and morally – picture of something that’s part of what the #MeToo discussion is about.”

Appiah noted that Burns has a “utterly distinctive voice that challenges conventional thinking and form in surprising and immersive prose”, saying that, due to the book’s free-floating structure and the texture of the language used, it can be a difficult read.

“It’s not a light read,” he said. “It’s challenging in the way a walk up Snowden is challenging; it’s definitely worth it when you get to the summit.”

Burns’s victory was announced at London’s Guildhall, where she was presented with a trophy by Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall, and £50,000 prize money by Man Group chief executive Luke Ellis. She also receives a specially designed version of her book and a further £2,500 for being shortlisted. The other shortlisted contestants also get £2,500 each.

"I'd like to acknowledge all the great writers on the shortlist and longlist with me," the visibly emotional Burns told the audience. "To all my dear friends, thank you. I think I'd better stop. Thanks."

Burns managed to beat stiff competition from Richard PowersThe Overstory, described as the “eco-epic of the year​” and the bookies’ favourite, as well as the youngest ever nominee for the award, the 27-year-old Daisy Johnson, who was nominated for Everything Under, a book that details the struggles of a young woman who was abandoned by her mother at the age of 16.

Other shortlisted nominees included Robin Robertson with The Long Take, which centres on a D-Day veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder; Rachel Kushner‘s The Mars Room, a gritty story about a former lap-dancer serving two life sentences in a women’s jail; and Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, which focusses on a young man who breaks free from the chains of slavery. Edugyan was the only author to have previously appeared on the shortlist, for her 2011 book Half-Blood Blues .

Writing for The Independent about the winning novel, Daisy Buchanan noted that Milkman is “upsettingly, structurally strange, but blackly and undeniably funny,” saying that “Burns deftly immerses the reader in an adolescent world by minimising great pains and making what is seemingly small feel enormous”.

Burns can expect to receive international recognition for winning the Booker prize. Last year’s winner George Saunders saw sales of his novel Lincoln in the Bardo increase 1227 per cent following the victory.

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