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Juliette Binoche, the actress who won an Oscar for "The English Patient," has never been interested in mainstream pieces. She declined Steven Spielberg's offer to be in "Jurassic Park". She says that a movie role has to make you feel something. (July 6th)
AP

LONDON – Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient" was named the greatest winner of the Man Booker Award at an event celebrating five decades of the prestigious literary award.

of love and conflict during the Second World War received the Golden Man Booker Prize for fiction after winning a public vote.

"The English Patient" won the Booker in 1992 and was transformed in 1996 with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche won nine Oscars.

He beat four other novels in an online poll that drew 9,000 votes in all. The organizers did not give a breakdown of votes for the books, each representing one of five decades.

A jury selected five books from the 51 Booker Laureates, an award that spurred writers' careers. such as Ian McEwan, Arundhati Roy and Kazuo Ishiguro.

"The English Patient", based on Michael Ondaatje's novel, won nine Oscars, including the best picture. (Photo: PHIL BRAY / MIRAMAX FILMS)

The 1970s finalist was "In a Free State" by V.S., from Trinidad. Naipaul, while "Moon Tiger" by British writer Penelope Lively was the 1980s pretender. Hilary Mantel's Tudor saga "Wolf Hall" and George Saunders' American Civil War Symphony " Lincoln in the Bardo "were the finalists of the years 2000 and 2010.

Ondaatje said he did not believe" for a second "that his book was the best. He paid tribute to the late Anthony Minghella, the director of the film "The English Patient", "which, I suspect, has something to do with the outcome of this vote."

Journalist Kamila Shamsie, One of the Judges "An extraordinary language, an intrigue tinged with mystery and irresistible characters, including a Canadian nurse, an Indian bomb destruction specialist, a thief turned spy and an aristocratic Hungarian archaeologist

Shamsie says the Ondaatje novel published at one time "the borders seemed much more assured", had a different resonance in the current climate, amidst "anxieties about boundaries and the Anxiety about migrants and others ".

"We all read a lot of books on World War II." And I think it's really brave and remarkable how he approaches this story and says that war is a trauma, and the war is to separate people by nations when there are so many other reasons for them to "

Founded in 1969, the Man Booker Award was originally open to British, Irish and Commonwealth writers, but eligibility was expanded in 2014 to all English-language novelists.

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