Anna Burns from Northern Ireland wins Man Booker Prize for Milkman

 

Anna Burns is the first Northern Ireland writer to win the Man Booker Prize for the original Milkman, a novel about a teenager girl’s struggle with sex and social coercion in Northern Ireland.

She is also the first UK-born winner since Hilary Mantel won in 2012, and the first female since 2013 to collect the £50, 000 cash prize, presented by the Duchess of Cornwall.

Milkman explores an 18-year-old girl’s struggles with male encroachment and pressures of social and sectarianism in an unnamed province.

Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Chairman of the judging panel said “ I really think this is a very original novel. We had never read anything like this before. It’s written in an amazing voice, This is a book about more than one thing. It is about many things. It’s quite amazing.”

This novel has been welcomed as one which will “help people think about Me Too”.

Ms Burns, 56, born in Belfast, but now lives in Southern England, said she did not write a political novel, it was simply the result of inspiration.