Roth Wins Man Booker International Prize

Saratoga Springs, NY (May 20, 2011) - Pulitzer-Prize winning Yaddo novelist Philip Roth has won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction, it was announced Thursday in Sydney, Australia.

The award, worth $100,000, is presented every two years to honor a writer’s body of work, as opposed to the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which is awarded for a single book. Roth, 78, beat out 12 other authors who were short-listed for the prize and is only the fourth writer to receive the award. Rick Gekoski, chairman of the judging panel, 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."

Roth could not travel to Sydney to receive the accolade because of back problems but said in a video message from his home in Connecticut: "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 honor and I'm delighted to receive it."

To read a conversation between Roth and fellow Yaddo writer Ben Taylor, click here.