'Midnight's Children' Named Best of the Bookers

Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" won the Best of the Booker award, topping a public poll to select the most outstanding novel published in the past 40 years and burnishing the reputation of a book that garnered the Booker of Bookers prize 15 years ago.

Mr. Rushdie defeated competition from six other finalists, including Nadine Gordimer, Peter Carey, and J.M. Coetzee to capture the contest trophy, designed to honor the finest novel to have won the U.K.'s annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction since its original incarnation as the Booker Prize.

There was no cash prize.

This is the second time Booker winners have been played off against each other. "Midnight's Children" won the Booker of Bookers award in 1993, the 25th anniversary of the prize.

This year's judging panel selected a short list for the Best of the Booker award, then threw the final choice open to the public. Of the 7,801 people who cast votes — either online or via SMS — 36 percent chose "Midnight's Children," the prize organizers said in an e-mailed statement today.