Absent Coetzee wins surprise second Booker award

The Booker prize threw up one of its greatest surprises last night when the South African writer J M Coetzee won for the second time, for his book Disgrace. He is the only novelist to have won the prestigious award twice.

A serious kind of joker

Comic novelist, columnist, playwright, Russian translator - he's been entertaining us one way or another for 40 years. But as his current stage hit and forthcoming novel demonstrate, there is a philosopher and art historian in there too. Nicholas Wroe reports