London, May 20 (ANI): Renowned litterateur J G Farrell has won another Booker prize, this time for 1970, three decades after his death.
Farrell has been posthumously conferred with the Lost Man Booker Prize for his book Troubles.
The award was instituted to acknowledge novels published in 1970 that did not get recognition because of a change in the award”s rules.
In 1971 a decision was taken to judge books from the current rather than the previous year.
Farrell, who bagged the Booker in 1973 for The Siege of Krishnapur, has now joined the league of J. M. Coetzee and Peter Carey who have won twice.
Richard Farrell, the late author”s younger brother, collected the prize at an event in Central London.
“This is a bitter-sweet moment for me…Sweet because he has won the prize, but bitter because he can”t be here to collect it himself. To his family it is proof-positive that he had overcome his disease, in childhood, of polio,” the Times quoted Richard, as saying.
He added: “To me, the book is a time machine. It takes me back to our childhood – growing up in Ireland, the smell of peat smoke in the air.”
Talking about how his brother would have felt about after winning the Booker again, Richard said: “I don”t think he would have been very surprised. He said that he expected his books to be read in 30 to 40 years” time, and he said that he thought Troubles was his best work.” (ANI)