Peter Carey wins Booker again

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, OCT. 18. The New York-based Australian novelist, Mr. Peter Carey, has won this year's Booker Prize for his book ``True History of the Kelly Gang'', a fictional account of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly told in his ``own'' voice. This is the second time he has won this prize - the first was in 1988 for ``Oscar and Lucinda''.

Mr. Carey picked up the £21,000 prize, regarded as the most prestigious literary honour in the English- speaking world, beating five other contenders, including his closest rival, Mr. Ian McEwan, whose ``Atonement'', a story of adolescent passion and guilt, was described by the chairman of the jury, Mr. Kenneth Baker, as a ``novel of startling surprises''. Incidentally, hours before the ``real'' Booker was announced, Mr. McEwan won the ``People's Booker'' awarded by readers. His novel has sold over 100,000 copies in recent weeks. In 1998, he won the Booker for ``Amsterdam'', a novel which judges said was inferior to ``Atonement''.

Mr. Carey, who said he would use the prize money to send his two sons to a private school in Manhattan apart from buying Mr. McEwan a ``very expensive dinner'', had been the bookies' favourite ever since their original favourite, Ms. Beryl Bainbridge, was dropped from the shortlist. With big guns such as Mr. V.S.Naipaul and Ms. Nadine Gordimer out of the shortlist, the contest had long been reduced to a toss-up between Mr. Carey and Mr. McEwan, though some judges had their own favourites. Two contenders who particularly impressed the judges were Ms. Rachel Seiffert, whose first novel ``The Dark Room'', about the collective German guilt over the Holocaust, was praised for its sheer boldness; and Ms. Ali Smith whose ``Hotel World'', centred round five women who come together in a seedy hotel. The other losers were: Mr. David Mitchell (Number 9 Loser) and David Mitchell (Oxygen).

Mr. Carey, who said he had wanted to write the story of Ned Kelly whom he regards as the modern day Robin Hood, is only the second novelist to win a Booker twice - Mr. J. M. Coetzee being the other. Mr. Salman Rushdie, whose novel ``Fury'' did not make it even to the longlist, has also got it twice but since the Booker of Bookers which he won in 1993 was a special award to commemorate Booker's 25th anniversary, it is not counted as part of the annual drill.

Announcing the winner at a high-profile function in London's Guildhall on Wednesday night, Mr. Baker said this was an ``exceptional'' year for fiction and choosing the best was not easy. He praised all the six novels on the shortlist for their ``readability'' and said he was particularly struck by the theme of ``displacement'' that ran through them.

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