The English Patient crowned Golden Man Booker winner

“The English Patient,” the wartime love story by Michael Ondaatje, won the Golden Man Booker Prize, The New York Times writes.

The one-off award, voted for by the public, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker prize. The shortlist of five novels was selected by a panel of judges from the 51 previous winners of the Man Booker, which honors the best novels written in English and published in Britain or Ireland.

"The English Patient is a compelling work of fiction — both poetic and philosophical," Baroness Helena Kennedy, chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, said. "As we celebrate the prize’s 50th anniversary, it’s a testament to the impact and legacy of the Man Booker Prize that all of the winning books are still in print."

Born in 1943 in Sri Lanka when it was known as Ceylon, Ondaatje now lives in Canada. “The English Patient,” which follows the lives of four characters brought together during World War II, told through the morphine-affected memories of a severely burned patient, was a Booker Prize winner in 1992.