Image courtesy The New York Times.

So, the winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize for fiction was announced yesterday; and it turned out to be none other than Anne Enright's The Gathering, a dark horse among this year's nominees that had only held 12-to-1 odds before the announcement. And why yes, in fact, The Gathering was among the eight Booker nominees this year that I was unable to track down either in the Chicago library system or at any of the bookstores I stopped by last month looking for them, meaning that neither I nor the majority of the Chicago population has ever had a chance to even get their hands on this year's winner yet. And that's, argh, a little frustrating to say the least; I don't know whether to curse the Booker nominating committee for picking such obscure books in the first place, or applaud them for getting some obscure books more attention than they had been receiving before. And make no mistake, The Gathering will get a lot more attention than it had been receiving before; Enright herself receives US$100,000 (50,000 pounds, 80000 euros) for the win, and her book is virtually guaranteed to go on to international bestseller status (as opposed to the mere several thousand copies worldwide it had sold as of yesterday; yes, when I say "obscure nominees" this year, I mean it).

Anyway, for those like me who need more information about the book, here are its official pages at Amazon, GoodReads, LibraryThing, Shelfari and Wikipedia. And here, for those are curious, are links to the five Booker nominees this year I was able to get my hands on before yesterday's announcement:

Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip
Mohsid Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Peter Ho Davies' The Welsh Girl
Michael Redhill's Consolation
Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach

As you'll see, of the five I was able to read, I personally found Redhill's Toronto-based Consolation to be the best; I'll be interested to compare it to The Gathering, whenever I'm able to finally get my hands on a copy. Here's hoping that I'll have better luck with this year's National Book Award nominees!