Dubliner Enright wins Booker literary prize

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) - Dubliner Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize, one of the literary world's most prestigious awards, on Tuesday for her bleak Irish family saga "The Gathering."

"We found it a very powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book", chairman of the judges Howard Davies said after picking one of the outsiders from the short list.

"It is an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language," he told reporters after the judges spent 2-1/2 hours closeted together picking the winner of the prize of $100,000.

Enright herself described the book as "the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepy".

"When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case, they shouldn't really pick up my book," she has admitted.

Asked if winning the famous prize under a harsh media spotlight might now provoke writer's block, the 45-year-old Enright said: "I am no spring chicken so it won't stop me squawking."

DARK SECRET

Her book tells the tale of the nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan who gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward, drink-fuelled brother Liam and relive a dark secret from his boyhood.