Atwood, Evaristo share Booker Prize

Panel breaks the rule to honor two writers

LONDON, Oct 15, (Agencies): 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 kaleidoscope of black women’s stories, “Girl, Woman, Other”.

Partly inspired by the environmental protesters of Extinction Rebellion, who were demonstrating near the prize ceremony’s venue in London’s financial district, Florence said the judges refused to back down when told the rules prohibit more than one winner.

“Our consensus was that it was our decision to flout the rules,” he 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.

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 page-turning thrillers,” he added.

Both winners said they were happy to share the prize.

Atwood, 79, previously won the prize in 2000 for “The Blind Assassin”, and “The Testaments”, published last month, is the sequel to the Canadian author’s best-selling 1985 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

Evaristo, the first black woman to win the prize, tells the stories of 12 characters, mainly female and black aged 19 to 93, living in Britain in “Girl, Woman, Other”.

While the prize has been jointly awarded twice previously, the rules changed in 1993 limiting the award to one author. The judges defied those rules, saying they could not agree on a winner between the two books, which were on a shortlist of six.

“Neither of us expected to win this,” Atwood said in her acceptance speech in a televised ceremony.

“I would have thought that I would have been too elderly and I kind of don’t need the attention so I’m very glad that you’re getting some ... It would have been embarrassing if I had been alone here,” she said to Evaristo.

Rights

Atwood has said a deterioration in women’s rights in some parts of the world including in the United States prompted her to write the sequel, described as a “savage and beautiful novel” by the judging panel.

“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 said winning the Booker was something that “felt so unattainable for decades.”

“So I’m just absolutely delighted to have the prize and to share the prize,” she said.

Atwood, who won the Booker in 2000 for “The Blind Assassin”, had been the bookmakers’ favorite to win the coveted trophy for a second time with her follow-up to “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Like that book – now a hit TV series – “The Testaments” is set in Gilead, a theocratic republic taken root in the United States, where young women are forced to bear children for powerful men.

Florence, founder of the Hay literary festival, said Atwood’s novel “does massively more” than just continue the story started in “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

“It’s beautiful in its depth and exploration of the world of Gilead,” he said. It might have looked like science fiction back in the day. Now it looks more politically urgent than ever before.”

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 cowinner.

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”.

“They give a wonderful spectrum of black British women today,” he said. “In that sense this book is groundbreaking – and I hope encouraging and inspiring to the rest of the publishing industry.”

Founded in 1969, the prize is open to English-language authors from around the world. It has been split between two winners twice before, most recently in 1992, when Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient” and Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger” shared the trophy. The rules were changed after that to stipulate there can only be one winner each year.

Judges chose the two winners from a six-book shortlist that included BritishTurkish author Elif Shafak’s Istanbulset “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World”; US-British writer Lucy Ellmann’s stream-of-consciousness novel “Ducks, Newburyport”; India-born British writer Salman Rushdie’s modern-day Don Quixote story, “Quichotte”; and “An Orchestra of Minorities”, a saga of love and exile by Nigeria’s Chigozie Obioma. make her first appearance on her former employer’s programming since leaving in early 2017. The “Tucker Carlson Tonight” segment would also mark Kelly’s first appearance on a TV-news outlet since cutting ties with NBCUniversal in January.

The announcement is certain to spark a flurry of questions as to whether Fox News is considering bringing Kelly, once one of its most-watched primetime hosts, back to its schedule – particularly in the wake of the recent departure of veteran anchor Shepard Smith. When asked if executives at the Fox Corporation-owned network expected Kelly to make other appearances on its air, the network said in a statement: “Megyn Kelly’s forthcoming guest appearance on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ was coordinated weeks ago and is a one-time occurrence. Any future programming changes we are considering do not involve her.”

Kelly could not be reached for immediate comment. The most recent post in her Twitter feed, put up in the hour before Carlson’s show came on the air at 8 pm, was a picture of a roaring fireplace hearth.

Carlson said he planned to interview Kelly about media bias, drawing on her experiences at NBC News. It is not clear whether Kelly is bound by a non-disparagement agreement. (RTRS)