Northern Irish Writer Anna Burns Wins 2018 Booker Prize For ‘Milkman’

Author Anna Burns has won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Milkman, becoming the first author from Northern Ireland to win the prestigious English-language literary award.

Burns, 56, who was born in Belfast, is the 17th woman to bag the award in its 49-year history and the first woman since 2013. It was her third novel.

Milkman, a coming of age story of a young woman's affair with a married man set in the political troubles of Northern Ireland, was named the winner at a lavish awards ceremony in London on Tuesday night. “None of us has ever read anything like this before,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, the chair of the 2018 judging panel said. “Anna Burns' utterly distinctive voice challenges conventional thinking and form in surprising and immersive prose.”

The recipient of the Man Booker Prize gets 52,500 pounds ($69,223 or Rs 50.85 lakh).

Burns, who lives in East Sussex in England, saw off competition from two British writers, two American writers and one Canadian writer.

Set in an unnamed city, Milkman focuses on a “middle sister” as she navigates her way through rumour, social pressures and politics in a tight-knit community. Burns shows the dangerous and complex impact on a woman coming of age in a city at war. Unusually, in the book, the characters have designations instead of names.

Burns explains: “The book didn't work with names. It lost power and atmosphere and turned into a lesser or perhaps just a different book.”

Her novel beat competition from Everything Under by Daisy Johnson, who, at 27, was the youngest nominee in the Man Booker prize history. The other nominees were The Long Take by Robin Robertson, Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, and The Overstory by Richard Powers.

Milkman is published by Faber & Faber, making it the fourth consecutive year the prize has been won by an independent publisher.