Anne Enright's Booker win big surpise for bookies

BEATING THE ODDS: The bookies had made Enright the rank outsider to win, giving her 20-1 odds.

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London: They say the Booker prize is unpredictable and full of surprises. And this year was no different.

Irish writer Anne Enright beat the bookies favourite Ian McEwan and Lloyd Jones to win the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for fiction this year.

'Powerful, uncomfortable and at times angry'- that's how the jury described Enright's novel, The Gathering.

The bookies had made her the rank outsider to win, giving her 20-1 odds.

“A part of the condition to be a writer is to control a word so when you realize you think you are going to win you also realize that that’s mad. So now I’m in a position where the madness has become real,” said Enright.

The Gathering is a family epic set in England and Ireland, in which a brother's suicide prompts the protagonist, Veronica Hegarty to probe her family's troubled, tangled history.

According to the judges, it's a dramatic novel of a grieving family in tough and striking language.

“Emotions described in this book, particularly the way in which it describes love and the opportunities and the dangers of missing those opportunities were ones that did not depend on having had a large family experience,” said Chairman, Man Booker Prize, Howard Davies.

The Gathering is 45-year-old Enright's fourth novel. She also has two short story collections to her name and a third one is well underway, to be released in March next year.

Enright is the second Irish Woman to win the prize in its 39-year-old history.

Defying all expectations by winning the Booker, it’s an award that will guarantee soaring sales and world-wide recognition.