ATWOOD AND EVARISTO . SHARE BOOKER PRIZE .
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 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 organisers 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. “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. —