The Man Booker International Prize 2011

On 18 May 2011, Philip Roth was announced as the winner of the fourth Man Booker International Prize at a press conference at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival. A festival event on 19 May 2011 featured an exclusive filmed interview with Roth by novelist and critic Benjamin Taylor.

This can be viewed here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QeIJ_xO7ns

Philip Roth is a literary giant and one of the world's most prolific, celebrated - and controversial - writers. Born in March 1933 in New Jersey, Roth is best known for his 1969 novel Portnoy's Complaint, and for his late-1990s trilogy comprising the Pulitzer Prize-winning American Pastoral (1997),
I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000).

The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2011 consisted of writer, academic and rare-book dealer Dr Rick Gekoski (Chair), publisher, writer and critic Carmen Callil, and award-winning novelist Justin Cartwright. Rick Gekoski commented:

"For more than 50 years Philip Roth's books have stimulated, provoked
and amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience. His imagination has not only recast our idea of Jewish identity, it has also reanimated fiction, and not just American fiction, generally.

"His career is remarkable in that he starts at such a high level, and keeps getting better. In his 50s and 60s, when most novelists are in decline, he wrote a string of novels of the highest, enduring quality. Indeed, his most recent, Nemesis (2010), is as fresh, memorable, and alive with feeling as anything he has written. His is an astonishing achievement."

Roth's award was then celebrated at a formal dinner in London on 28 June 2011, where Rick Gekoski discussed the judging process which saw much passionate debate over different candidates and how the winner was eventually decided.

His full speech can be read at:

http://www.themanbookerprize.com/perspective/articles/1567 

Hermione Lee, academic and author of a 1982 study on Philip Roth, then made the following speech as acceptance on behalf of Roth, who was unable to attend.

http://soundcloud.com/manbookerprize/hermoine-lee-accepts-man

Roth's acceptance message was shown via a video feed to the guests, and can now be viewed on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6uL8SUYqeY

Here is the text extract of this message:

"I would like to thank the judges of the Man Booker Prize for awarding me this esteemed prize. One of the particular pleasures I've had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails. I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honour and I'm delighted to receive it." 

The dinner concluded with Roth reading an extract from Nemesis which can now be viewed on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bawh9k-Ke4Q 

The other finalists for the Man Booker International Prize 2011 were:

Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
James Kelman (UK)
John le Carré (UK)
Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
David Malouf (Australia)
Dacia Maraini (Italy)
Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
Philip Pullman (UK)
Marilynne Robinson (USA)
Su Tong (China)
Anne Tyler (USA)
Wang Anyi (China)

The Man Booker International Prize, worth £60,000, is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented once every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language. It has previously been awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009.