Jewish author Philip Roth has won the Man Booker International Prize for the body of work in his more than 50-year-long career.
The biennial award to be presented in June in London to Roth, 78, was announced Wednesday. The author of the widely read and controversial “Potnoy’s Complaint” has also won two National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
The author is well known for creating the character Nathan Zuckerman, often considered a Roth alter-ego.
Authors on the shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize included: Rohinton Mistry, Philip Pullman, Anne Tyler, and Chinese novelists Wang Anyi and Su Tong. Previous winners include Canadian writer Alice Munro, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, and Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
The annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded for a single book.
Following the announcement, author and publisher Carmen Callil withdrew from the prize’s three-judge panel, citing her displeasure with giving the award to Roth, the Guardian reported.
