18.05.11 | Katie Allen | The Bookseller

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth has been awarded the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize 2011.

The author of The Human Stain and American Pastoral was chosen from a list of 13 contenders including Marilynne Robinson, Anne Tyler and John le Carré.

Judge Rick Gekoski said: “For more than 50 years Philip Roth’s books have stimulated, provoked and amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience. His imagination has not only recast our idea of Jewish identity, it has also reanimated fiction, and not just American fiction, generally.

“His career is remarkable in that he starts at such a high level, and keeps getting better.”

Roth said: “I would like to thank the judges of the Man Booker Prize for awarding me this esteemed prize. One of the particular pleasures I’ve had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails. I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honour and I’m delighted to receive it.”

The Man Booker International Prize is awarded for an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It is presented one every two years to a living author for a body of work published either originally in English or widely available in translation in the English language. Previous winners were Ismail Kadaré in 2005, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Alice Munro in 2009.

Roth’s award will be celebrated at a formal dinner in London on 28th June.