Oz author Richard Flanagan pips favorite Neel Mukherjee to win Man Booker Prize

Richard Flanagan's wartime novel 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' has won the Man Booker for year 2014, beating Neel Mukherjee's novel 'The Lives of Others' that was the bookmaker's favorite.

Flanagan won the 50,000 pounds Man Booker Prize presented by The Duchess of Cornwall, the BBC reported.

It is his third novel, written in prose of extraordinary elegance and force, bridging East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism and it took Flanagan 12 years to get his novel right.

The story is set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and centers on the experiences of surgeon Dorrigo Evans, who is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier.