British author Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty yesterday won the Booker Prize

‘Line of Beauty’ by Hollinghurst grabs Booker Prize

British author Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty yesterday won the Booker Prize, the prestigious literary accolade for the best novel of contemporary fiction published in the Commonwealth and Ireland. Hollinghurst's gay novel about Britain in the Thatcherite 1980s took the GBP50,000 award (US$90 000) leaving behind 21 other books.

Line of Besuty, classified by lAfrica.com as a satire, was not the favourite with the betting companies.  As GamblingGates.com reported on August 31, William Hill had this book at 10/1 along with Shakespeare's Snowleg, Nicola Barker's Clear and Susanna Clarke's historical fantasy masterpiece Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which attracted enormous attention when it was published, was expected to take the highest accolade and was listed by William Hill at 3/1 at first, before its odds shortened to 5/4. Ladbokes also had him as one of the stronge favourites, but success was not to be.

"I hardly know where I am," said Hollinghurst after winning the award. "My whole psychological technique for dealing with this evening was to convince myself I wasn't going to win it."

The final decision was "an incredibly difficult one" for the judges , said the panel chairman and former culture secretary Chris Smith. "It has resulted in a winning novel that is exciting, brilliantly written and gets deep under the skin of the Thatcherite 80s. The search for love, sex and beauty is rarely this exquisitely done."

Hollinghurst's book was the first gay novel to win the Booker in its 36 years. IAfrica.com reported, that Smith, who was Britain's first openly gay Cabinet minister, commented on the final decision saying that "the fact it was a gay novel did not figure at all in the discussions we had about the book". He added: "In fact it can be considered as a perfectly valid part of contemporary fiction. Without regarding that as unique shows how much times have changed."

Hollinghurst’s novel is set during the years that conservative Thatcher was prime minister. The book also chronicles the spread of AIDS as its central character Nick loses his sexual innocence, first to a lowly civil servant and then to a multi-millionaire Lebanese playboy.

The list of books taken for the Booker Prize were chosen from 132 entries submitted by publishers, some of which the judging panel condemned as "drivel" and "really dreadful", reported Guardian.