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 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.
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.”
Atwood, 79, is the oldestever Booker winner. Evaristo, who is of Anglo-Nigerian heritage, is the first black woman to take the trophy. 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 ground-breaking — and I hope encouraging and inspiring to the rest of the publishing industry.”