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Reader's Cafe

The Man Booker Prizes

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, sponsored by Man Group plc, is an annual literary prize awarded to the best novel, written in English, by a citizen of the Commonwealth.

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded once every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published or widely translated into English.

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Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

A truly wonderful novel that will have the reader immersed in the story from the very first page, and all the while marvelling at the precision of Barnes’ prose. Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove. The Sense of an Ending is the story of one man coming to terms with the mutable past. Laced with trademark precision, dexterity and insight, it is the work of one of the world’s most distinguished writers.

The shortlist included Carol Birch's Jamrach’s Menagerie, Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English and A D Miller's Snowdrops.

Man Booker International Prize 2011

Phillip Roth

Philip Roth (born March 1933, New Jersey) is an American novelist.  He is probably best known for his 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus, his 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint, and for his late-’90s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000).

Previous Winners

2010 Prize: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

2009 Prize: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2009 International Prize: Alice Munro

2007 International Prize: Chinua Achebe

2005 International Prize: Ismail Kadare

The Man Booker Prizes Website