Booker panel ignores own rulebook, honours Atwood, Evaristo

LONDON:

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and British author Bernardine Evaristo split the Booker Prize on Monday, after the judging panel ripped up the rulebook and refused to name one winner for the prestigious fiction trophy.

Chairman Peter Florence said the five judges simply couldn’t choose between Atwood’s dystopian thriller The Testaments and Evaristo’s polyphonic kaleidoscope of black women’s stories, Girl, Woman, Other. “Our consensus was that it was our decision to flout the rules,” Florence said. “I think laws are inviolable and rules are adaptable to the circumstance.”

Prize organizers didn’t see it that way. Gaby Wood, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said prize trustees repeatedly told the judges they couldn’t have two winners, but they “essentially staged a sit-in in the judging room” as deliberations dragged on for five hours.

The Guardian reported that when asked if she supported the decision, Wood said: “It is an explicit flouting of the rules and they all understood that. It was a rebellious gesture but it was… a generous one.” Wood insisted the decision “doesn’t set a precedent”. It means Atwood and Evaristo will split the 50,000 pound ($63,000) Booker Prize purse.

Florence said both of the winning books “address the world today and give us insights into it and create characters that resonate with us”. “They also happen to be wonderfully compelling pageturning thrillers,” he added.

Both winners said they were happy to share the prize. “It would have been quite embarrassing for a person of my age and stage to have won the whole thing and thereby have kept a younger one, at different stage of their career, from going through that door,” said Atwood, who, at 79, is the oldest-ever Booker winner.

Evaristo, 60, said winning the Booker was something that “felt so unattainable for decades”. Evaristo, who is of Anglo-Nigerian heritage, is the first black woman to take the trophy. “I hope that honor doesn’t last too long,” she said. She has published seven previous books, but is less known than her co-winner.

Florence said he wasn’t worried Evaristo, 60, would be overlooked as people focused on Atwood.

He said that “there is something utterly magical” about the 12 characters from many walks of life who narrate Girl, Woman, Other.