Anna Burns sounds almost giddy as we sit in a restaurant in Brighton. It’s not long since she won the Man Booker Prize for Milkman, her third novel, about an unnamed 18-year-old coerced into a relationship at the height of Northern Ireland’s Troubles. The win isn’t the only reason for her excitement. “I can feel I’m on the cusp of something,” she says. Burns suffers from “lower back and nerve pain”, she says, the result of a botched operation. “Nerves pain”, she suddenly adds, correcting herself. “There’s plenty of nerves involved.” Thanks to the Booker, which includes a £50,000 prize, she may get treatment in Germany without having to worry about the cost. “If it’s successful, I’ll be able to write again,” she says. “I haven’t written in four and a half years.” The last writing she did was finishing Milkman, a process that dragged out for months because of the pain. She had tried standing desks, she says. And various chairs. “But it’s not just the physical pain. It’s the whole emotional stress that goes with it.” “Can we just move off the health?” she adds with an awkward laugh. She then gets out of the chair and leans against a pillar to make herself more comfortable. “Don’t worry, I do this a lot,” she says. Published in Daily Times, December 2nd 2018.