The English Patient voted best Man Booker Prize winner

Canadian writer’s tale of love and conflict was awarded the prize for fiction after a public vote

Ondaatje said he did not believe “for a second” that his book was the best. He paid tribute to the late The English Patient film director, Anthony Minghella, “who I suspect had something to do with thShow more

Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient was named the greatest winner of the Man Booker Prize at an event on Sunday which celebrated five decades of the prestigious literary award.

The Canadian writer's tale of love and conflict during the Second World War was awarded the Golden Man Booker Prize for fiction after winning a public vote.

The English Patient won the Booker in 1992 and was made into a 1996 movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche that won nine Academy Awards.

It beat four other novels in an online poll that drew 9,000 votes in all. Organisers did not give a breakdown of votes for the books, each of which represented one of five decades.

A panel of judges selected five books from among the 51 winners of the Booker, a prize that has boosted the careers of writers such as Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Kazuo Ishiguro.

The 1970s finalist was In A Free State by Trinidad-born VS Naipaul, while Moon Tiger by British writer Penelope Lively was the 1980s contender. Hilary Mantel's Tudor saga Wolf Hall and George Saunders' American Civil War fiction Lincoln In The Bardo were the finalists from the 2000s and 2010s.

Ondaatje said he did not believe "for a second" that his book was the best. He paid tribute to the late The English Patient film director, Anthony Minghella, "who I suspect had something to do with the result of this vote".

Novelist Kamila Shamsie, one of the judges, said Ondaatje’s book combined “extraordinary” language, a plot tinged with mystery and compelling characters, including a Canadian nurse, an Indian bomb-disposal expert, a thief-turned-spy and an aristocratic Hungarian archaeologist.

Shamsie said Ondaatje’s novel, published at a time when “borders seemed much more assured,” had a different resonance in the current climate, amid “anxieties about borders and anxiety about migrants and other people.”

“We’ve all read lots of books about the Second World War. We think of it, with good reason, as the good war,” she said.

“And I think it is really brave and remarkable the way he goes into that story and says war is trauma, and war is about separating people by nations when there are so many other reasons for them to be together,” she added.

Established in 1969, the Man Booker prize was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers, but eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all English-language novelists.