John Banville was last night declared winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Wexford-born Banville's winning novel, The Sea, is the elegiac story of an elderly widower returning to the seaside village where he spent his childhood summers. He is the first Irish winner since Roddy Doyle won with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in 1993.
At a ceremony in London's Guildhall, the chair of the judges, Prof John Sutherland, paid tribute to Banville's book as "a masterful study of grief, memory and love recollected". Describing the last round of discussions as "extraordinarily closely contested", Prof Sutherland went on to say: "the judges felt the level of the short-listed novels was as high as it can ever have been."
Now in its 37th year, the Man Booker Prize is acknowledged as the most prestigious literary award in Britain. Banville will take home a cheque for £50,000. The Sea had sold only 3,318 copies in the UK up until last Tuesday but Banville can now expect another financial windfall as bookshops in Britain and Ireland stock up.
Speaking last night at the Guildhall, Banville said winning was "a great surprise, a great pleasure". He said his advice to other authors was "just hang around and it will come. I hung around for many years and it did come." He thanked his editor, agent and publisher for sticking with him when he wrote what he described as "many unsaleable books over the years".
To many observers at the Guildhall last night, there was a pleasing symmetry to Banville's win. One of this year's shortlisted novels was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Booker Prize in 1989 with The Remains of the Day. In the same year Banville was shortlisted for The Book of Evidence.
Arthur and George by thrice-nominated author Julian Barnes was the bookies' favourite yesterday afternoon at odds of 5/4. Others included on the shortlist were Dublin author Sebastian Barry with A Long, Long Way, Zadie Smith with On Beauty and Ali Smith with The Accidental.
John Banville wrote his first book, Long Lankin, in 1970 at the age of 25. Since then he has written 13 further novels, including Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Untouchable and Shroud. He lives in Dublin and was literary editor of The Irish Times for over a decade.