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Australian writer Richard Flanagan won one of the most important literature prizes, Man Booker Prize, Tuesday evening in London, making his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North the finest English book this year.
Born in Tasmania in 1961, Flanagan is one of the leading novelists in Australia.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a love story between a doctor and his uncle's wife, which was set in one of the most infamous episodes of Japanese history, the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II.
The 53-year-old writer's father was a Japanese prisoner of war who survived Burma's Death Railway. He died the day that Flanagan finished the novel, at the age of 98.
After 12 years' work, Flanagan not only won the title, but was given a 50,000 pounds prize.
He is the third Australian to win the prize, following Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark in 1982 and Peter Carey, winner of two Booker Prizes: Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and The True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.
The other five writers nominated in the shortlist earlier on September included two American and three Britons.
Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler were the first two American nominees in the history of this prize. Their works are To Rise Again at a Decent Hour and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, respectively.
Previous British winner Howard Jacobson's new book J, Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others and Ali Smith's How to Be Both were also on the shortlist this year.
The five authors can be awarded 2,500 pounds and receive a specially bound edition of their books.
The prize was launched in 1969, aiming to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The rule has been changed this year, as authors across the world who write in English are allowed to compete for the prize.
