The winner of the Golden Man Booker Prize was announced Sunday night in London, with Ondaatje’s beloved story of war and romance going up against four other books, each of them selected by a judge as his or her favorite Man Booker winner of a given decade.

Among the shortlisted novels, Robert McCrum chose “In a Free State” by V. S. Naipaul for the 1970s, Lemn Sissay chose “Moon Tiger” by Penelope Lively for the 1980s, Kamila Shamsie chose “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje for the 1990s, Simon Mayo chose “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel for the noughties and Hollie McNish chose “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders for the 2010s.

Chosen from 51 Man Booker winners in all, those five shortlisted picks were then put to a month-long online public vote, with “The English Patient” emerging the overall Golden Booker winner.

In a ceremony announcing the winner, Shamsie explained her choice: “Ondaatje’s imagination acknowledges no borders as it moves between Cairo, Italy, India, England, Canada — and between deserts and villas and bomb craters. And through all this, he makes you fall in love with his characters, live their joys and their sorrows. Few novels really deserve the praise: transformative. This one does.”

At the ceremony at the Soundbank Centre, which aired live on Facebook, actors Chiwetel Ejiofor, Fiona Shaw, Geoffrey Streatfeild and Meera Syal performed reading from the shortlisted books, with Ejiofor reading from “The English Patient.”