Irish novelist John Banville recently won the 2005 Booker Prize for The Sea (Picador). He received £50,000 (approximately $87,300). The prize, sponsored by the Man Group investment company, is given for the best novel of the year by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland. The judges were Lindsay Duguid, Rick Gekoski, Josephine Hart, David Sexton, and John Sutherland.
Banvillle was chosen from a shortlist that included Julian Barnes for Arthur & George (Jonathan Cape), Sebastian Barry for A Long for Long Way (Faber & Faber), Kazuo Ishiguro for Never Let Me Go (Faber & Faber), Ali Smith for The Accidental (Hamish Hamilton), and Zadie Smith for On Beauty (Hamish Hamilton).
