The first half has been written, and I rustle up a synopsis.I don't have a chance in hell, I tell myself. OCTOBER 2004 I post a brown A4 envelope containing a synopsis and three pages of the first chapter of my novel, The Olive Readers. This was a travesty of a result from a travesty of a judging process.. The Dublin novelist, whose emotional rage is limited and whose prose exhibits all the chilly perfection of a waxwork model, must today count himself as the luckiest writer on the planet.

By choosing John Banville's The Sea, they selected an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism ahead of a shortlist, and a long list, packed with a plenitude of riches and delights. Yesterday the Man Booker judges made possibly the worst, certainly the most perverse, and perhaps the most indefensible choice in the 36-year history of the contest. But that grouse apart, his production is endlessly inventive, its subtly choreographed movement and illusionary effects set against a haunting soundscape.To 22 October (0151-709 4776). His literary debut came more than three decades ago and he was first named a Booker contender in 1989. But in a year acclaimed as arguably the best in the history of Britain's most prestigious literary prize, John Banville, 59, and his poetic, nostalgic novel, The Sea, was still a surprise winner at last night's ceremony, beating the bookies' hot favourite, Julian Barnes, and fiction's glamorous young star Zadie Smith to the