With the help of a huge and bad tempered Bengal Tiger, the Booker Prize recovered its roar last night.
Yann Martel, the 39-year-old Canadian novelist, shipwrecked the expectations of pundits and publishers to win the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for fiction.
His eccentric and entrancing third novel, 'Life of Pi',
beat fancied contenders such as Sarah Waters and William Trevor to secure a narrow victory.
Martyn Goff, the prize administrator, revealed that the 70-minute debate between the judges had been heated, but denied that they had suffered any "blood on the walls".
Professor Lisa Jardine, who chaired this year's judging panel, called 'Life of Pi' "an audacious book in which inventiveness explores belief.
It is, as the author says, a novel which will make you believe in God - or ask yourself why you don't.
Life of Pi, published by the independent Scottish firm Canongate, is the most unusual Booker victor in a decade. Martel is also the second Canadian to carry the award across the Atlantic within three years. In 2000, Margaret Atwood won with 'The Blind Assassin'.
- INDEPENDENT
