The English Patient wins best Man Booker in 50 years

By Willie Gordon Suting

 Twenty six years ago, the panel of judges were so unsure who should win the Man Booker in 1992 that they ended up with a tie: Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth. But on Sunday evening Ondaatje edged ahead, with his bestselling novel The English Patient being named best winner of the Booker prize of the last 50 years, in a public vote.

The Golden Booker was held this year to mark a half-century of the prize. A panel of judges read all 52 former winners of the award, with each assigned a decade from the Booker’s history. VS Naipaul’s In a Free State, Penelope Lively’sMoon Tiger, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardowere in the nominees.

Speaking at the close of the Man Booker 50 festival in the Southbank Centre, London, Ondaatje said, “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 or a major work like Wolf Hall. I suspect and know more than anyone that perhaps The English Patient is still cloudy, with errors in pacing.”

Judge Shamsie said Ondaatje’s historical novel received the most votes, with nearly 9,000 votes cast by public. “Few novels really deserve the praise: transformative” said Shamsie. “It moves seamlessly between the epic and the intimate – one moment you’re in looking at the vast sweep of the desert, and the next moment watching a nurse place a piece of plum in a patient’s mouth … It’s intricately and rewardingly structured, beautifully written, with great humanity written into every page”. The book was also adapted into a multiple Oscar-winning film.

“A lot of books by male writers are only interested in the lives of men – they may be wonderful books, but the women figure quite peripherally,” she said. “Hana to me is the centre of the novel, and is done with such love, care and understanding and complexity”, said Shamsie.

Shamsie batted away suggestions that the novel had won because it was the best-known on the shortlist, thanks to the film adaptation. “Hilary Mantel is very well known too, and if you’re going to vote in something like this, you’re probably voting because it matters to you,” she said.

And The English Patient film, she said, focuses on Almasy’s affair, while for her, the central love story is between Hana and Kip, an Indian Sikh bomb disposal expert. “A lot of people when they’re reading the book are probably imagining Ralph Fiennes though, and that doesn’t hurt anything,” she said.