Book News
Alan Hollinghurst takes the Booker
Wednesday 20 October 2004
'The Line Of Beauty', by Alan Hollinghurst, beat David Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas', which had been the hot favourite.
'The Master' by Irish writer Colm Tóibín had also been shortlisted as had Achmat Dangor's 'Bitter Fruit', Sarah Hall's 'The Electric Michelangelo' and 'I'll Go To Bed At Noon' by Gerard Woodward.
'The Line of Beauty' traces the story of Nicholas Guest, a young innocent who gets caught up in the opulent world of the 80s as lived by his Tory MP landlord.
As he accepted the award, Hollinghurst said: "It's very amazing to me that the long, solitary process of writing a novel should lead to a moment like this."
"I hardly know where I am. My whole psychological technique for dealing with this evening was to convince myself I wasn't going to win it."
Chair of the judges, MP Chris Smith, said the final decision was between the "big three" of Hollinghurst, Mitchell and Tóibín.
He added: "This was an incredibly difficult and close decision. It has resulted in a winning novel that is exciting, brilliantly written and gets deep under the skin of the Thatcherite 80s. The search for love, sex and beauty is rarely this exquisitely done."
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