Man Booker Prize goes to Flanagan

"In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle…I just didn't expect to end up the chicken," Richard Flanagan said on Tuesday night after being awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

The Australian author's novel "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" beat out five other nominations in a year marked by particularly strong novels, according to jury chairman and philosopher A.C. Grayling.

Flanagan's book "hits you so hard in the stomach, like this, that you can't pick up the next one in the pile for a couple of days," jury chairman and philosopher A.C. Grayling said.

The prize includes 50,000 pounds ($80,000; 63,000 euros).

'Not really a war novel'

In his novel, Flanagan took up the Thailand-Burma "Death Railway," a 415-kilometer (258-mile) railway line stretching between Bangkok, Thailand and Rangoon, Burma (Myanmar) which Japanese forces constructed using Allied prisoner labor.

His own father was a survivor of the notorious railroad. He died at the age of 98 shortly after Flanagan completed the work.

"It's not really a war novel, it's not about people shooting and bombs going off, and so on, it's much more about the people and their relationships," jury chairman Grayling said, adding that the Australian writer had shown "extra dimensions" between the POWs and their guards.

The Man Booker Prize was previously awarded to writers from the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations comprising Britain's former colonies. However, this year the jury made a controversial decision by allowing anyone whose work had been published in English in those countries, meaning that Americans could also compete.

Flanagan won over British authors Howard Jacobson ("J"), Neel Mukherjee ("The Lives of Others"), Ali Smith ("How to be Both") and Americans Karen Jay Fowler ("We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves") and Joshua Ferris ("To Rise Again at a Decent Hour").

kms/rc (AP, AFP, Reuters)