LONDON, Oct. 19 (UPI) -- Author Alan Hollinghurst was named Tuesday the winner of Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for 2004 for his novel, "The Line of Beauty."
The Booker Prize was announced by MP Chris Smith, chairman of the judges, during a ceremony in the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster in London, the BBC reported.
Also nominated for the award for the best novel of the last 12 months by an author from a commonwealth country or the Republic of Ireland, were: Achmat Dangor, Sarah Hall, Colm Toibin, Gerard Woodward and David Mitchell.
The prize also includes a check of more than $90,000.
"It's very amazing to me that the long, solitary process of writing a novel should lead to a moment like this," said Hollinghurst. "I hardly know where I am. My whole psychological technique for dealing with this evening was to convince myself I wasn't going to win it."
The prize-winning book is about an Oxford University graduate living in the London house of a Conservative politician during the 1980s, who has an affair with a black council worker before falling in love with a cocaine-addicted millionaire, the BBC said.
