Booker prize-winning author John Berger dead at 90

Booker prize-winning author John Berger dead at 90. January. 04, 2017 07:10. by Wan-Jun Yun zeitung@donga.com. John Berger, the British art critic, intellectual and prodigious author, died Monday at his home in the Paris suburb, AP reported. He was 90.

The author of "Ways of Seeing," published in 1972, helped transform the way a generation looked at and perceived art. Translated into Korean, the book is also a must-read for people majoring art.

He won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1972 for his novel "G," which depicted Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Booker Prize is one of the world's top three literary awards along with the Nobel Prize Literature and France's Goncourt Prize. When he won the Booker Prize for "G," Berger spoke against the prize's roots in Caribbean slave labour and pledged to give half his reward to the Black Panthers, a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization. With the remaining prize money, he published "A Seventh Man," a story on immigrant workers from Europe.

AP praised Berger an author of criticism, novels, poetry and screenplays, having had a considerable influence as a late 20th century thinker.