Philip Roth, giant of American letters, has won the 2011 Man Booker International award.

The author, a perennial contender for the Nobel prize in literature, Pulitzer Prize Award winner, National Book Award winner, etc., was named winner of the Man Booker International at the Sydney Writers' Festival today, beating a stellar, if eclectic, shortlist. Also in the running were the British children's author Philip Pullman, award-winning Chinese writer Su Tong, American authors Anne Tyler and Marilynne Robinson, Australia's David Malouf and a reluctant John le Carré who had asked – unsuccessfully – for his name to be withdrawn from contention.  Announcing the winner, Rick Gekoski, chair of the judges, said that for 50 years, Roth's books have "stimulated, provoked and amused an enormous, and still expanding, audience".