Banville book sales soar 300% after prize win
11/10/2005 - 15:09:20Sales of John Banville’s novel The Sea have shot up by 300% since scooping last night’s Man Booker Prize.
Other authors on the shortlist have also seen their sales continue to increase after the announcement.
The Irish writer’s novel is now at number 15 on the online retailer’s Hot 100 chart.
Sales of Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George and Sebastian Barry’s A Long, Long Way both rose by 112%.
Kes Nielson, books product manager of Amazon.co.uk, said: “The spikes in sales of the Booker shortlist shows just how much this prize grips the imagination of the book-buying public.
“The sudden sales surge of the shortlist at 10pm, just as the winner was being announced on TV, goes to show how many people rely on the event to determine the next addition to their bookshelf.”
Banville, 59, a 7/1 outsider, triumphed to the £50,000 (€74,000) prize after a fierce debate among the judges who were torn between Banville and Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go.
In 1989 his novel The Book Of Evidence was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but lost out to Ishiguro's The Remains Of The Day.
The narrator of The Sea is Max Morden, a middle-aged arts historian mourning the recent death of his wife from cancer.
He returns to the Irish seaside town where he spent a childhood summer and recalls the traumatic events which have haunted him ever since.
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