LONDON: Anna Burns won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction late Tuesday for Milkman, a vibrant, violent story about men, women, conflict and power set during Northern Ireland’s years of Catholic-Protestant violence.

Burns is the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the 50,000-pound prize, which is open to English-language authors from aro­und the world. She received her trophy from Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a black-tie ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.

The 56-year-old Belfast-born novelist said she was “stunned” to have won. Burns said her books took a long time to complete, and she has often struggled financially since her first novel, No Bones, was released in 2001.

Burns said that with her prize money, “I will clear my debts and live on what’s left.”

The writer said the germ of Milkman came to her in the image of a teenage girl walking down a street in a divided city while reading the novel Ivanhoe.

Milkman is narrated by a bookish young woman dealing with an older man who uses family ties, social pressure and political loyalties as weapons of sexual coercion and harassment. It is set in the 1970s, but was published amid the global eruption of sexual misconduct allegations that spar­ked the “Me Too” movement.

Burns beat five other novelists, including the bookies’ favourites: American writer Richard Powers’ tree-centric eco-epic The Overstory and Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, the story of a slave who escapes from a sugar plantation in a hot-air balloon.

The Man Booker has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers, and the one who will emerge from the field to beat other finalists is always subject to intense speculation and lively betting.

It’s likely to bring a big boost to Burns, who has published two previous novels, but is hardly a household name.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2018