According to BBC News, on October 18, Julian Barnes won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novel, The Sense of an Ending. Barnes, 65, received 50,000 British Pounds at an award ceremony in London. This was the author’s fourth time having made it to the shortlist finals of the Booker Prize.

“It is a beautifully written book,” Stella Rimington, chair of the 2011 judges, said. “We thought it was a book that spoke to humankind in the 21st century: none of us really know who we are—we present ourselves in all sorts of ways.”

Barnes, author of eleven novels, several short stories, and essays, has won many prizes, including France’s Prix Medicis and Prix Femina for Flaubert’s Parrot and Talking it Over.

Upon acceptance of the award, Barnes said, “It has to look like something worth buying and worth keeping.

The rest of the six finalists included Patrick DeWitt (The Sisters Brothers), Carol Birch (Jamrach’s Menagerie), Esi Edugyan (Half Blood Blues), Stephen Kelman (Pigeon English), and A.D. Miller (Snowdrops). Kelman and Miller stood out as debut authors.

The BBC News added that despite the troubled publishing industry, this year’s shortlisted books became the best-selling in Booker history, seeing an increase in sales of 127% after the shortlist was announced.