Banville wins Booker Prize and £50,000 for 'The Sea'

John Banville was last night declared winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Wexford-born Banville's winning novel, The Sea is the elegiac story of an elderly widower returning to the seaside village where he spent his childhood summers. He is the first Irish winner since Roddy Doyle won with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in 1993.

In a close-run contest, the judges agreed to award the 2005 prize to John Banville's novel The Sea which they described as 'a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected'.

The narrator in the novel is a middle aged man mourning the death of his wife as he returns to the seaside town where he spent a childhood summer.
The Sea is John Banville's fourteenth novel. The 59-year-old writer had previously been on the Booker shortlist in 1989 for his novel The Book of Evidence.

The last Irish writer to win the prize was Roddy Doyle in 1993.
The Booker winner is guaranteed a massive boost in sales.

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Banville wins Booker Prize and £50,000 for 'The Sea'