British author Julian Barnes on Tuesday won the 2011 Man Booker Prize, one of the highest-profile awards in English-language literature, for his novel ‘The Sense of an Ending’. Barnes, who has been shortlisted three times before, picked up the £50,000 award, which recognises the best work of fiction by an author from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, at a ceremony in London.
He told the audience assembled at the Guildhall he was “as much relieved as I am delighted” after losing out in 1984, 1998 and 2005. Barnes was the bookmaker’s favourite ahead of Carol Birch, with ‘Jamrach’s Menagerie’, and AD Miller’s thriller ‘Snowdrops’.