Booker panel pits Atwood against Rushdie
Margaret is bookmakers’ favourite to win the coveted fiction trophy again
London, Oct. 14: Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood is bookmakers’ favorite to win the coveted fiction trophy for a second time. Britain’s storied Booker Prize will pit literary giants Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie against four emerging stars when it unveils the winner on Monday on its 50th anniversary award.
The title of best work of English-language fiction published in the United Kingdom and Ireland has launched careers and courted controversy since its creation in 1969.
Past laureates have ranged from celebrated writers such as Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes to Kazuo Ishiguro and Roddy Doyle.
Paul Beatty became the first American winner when the Booker bowed to pressure and began including authors from outside the British commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe in 2013. The five-judge panel includes the writer-broadcaster Afua Hirsch and the British-Chinese novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo. Atwood’s sixth Booker nomination comes for The Testaments, a bestselling sequel to her 1985 dystopian classic The Handmaid's Tale.
The Guardian said the book, which picks up the tale of three women 15 years on, presents “Atwood at her best”.
“It’s a question of things escaping from a book to the real world and the author has zero control,” the 79-year-old said upon its release last month.
Nominated for the 1986 prize, The Handmaid’s Tale became an awardwinning TV series in 2017.
Mr Rushdie, whose contender is called Quichotte, won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children. His tragicomedy inspired by the classic Don Quixote, is the story of an ageing travelling salesman who falls in love with a TV star and sets off to drive across America on a quest to prove himself worthy of her hand. — AP