And the Man Booker Prize winner is ......

The Sea by John Banville, announced at the ceremony at London's Guildhall on October 10. If you had money on the outcome, you will be celebrating this unlikely winner, at least when compared to the bookmakers. At 10-1, The Sea was judged by William Hill to be fifth favourite out of a field of six. But what do the book critics know, having favoured the high-profile claims of Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith in vain.

The Sea has already been coded at StoryCode (we'd like many more encodings, of course):

The Sea by John Banville
Code it now UK, View UK matches, Code it now US, View US matches

We would love to hear your views via the Comments link, below, as to whether you would be more or less likely to read The Sea, based on StoryCode's book recommendations for the novel. We would also like to know whether you are more or less likely to read The Sea now that it has won the Booker Prize. Are winning prizes more influential with you than word-of-mouth recommendations, or is it the other way around? Whatever you think, we would love to hear from you.

Christopher Norris