Booker Prize must go to one person only, rules chairman

THE Booker Prize jury will not be allowed to split the award again, the new chairman of the trustees has said, following last year’s controversy.

There was uproar in the literary world when the 2019 jury decided to throw out the rule book – which allows for only one winner – and jointly award the prize to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo.

Some thought the decision unfairly took the spotlight from Evaristo and her book, Girl, Woman, Other, as she was relatively unknown in comparison with Atwood.

Mark Damazer, the former controller of Radio 4, has succeeded Helena Kennedy as chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, an appointment for a maximum six-year term.

“What you don’t want last year to do is to set a precedent, and I think this is a rather crucial point, in which everybody comes in and signs up for one rule and then decides there’s a different rule thereafter,” he said.

Mr Damazer said narrowing a shortlist down to one winner “sometimes must be agony”.

“But when you sign up to the Booker, you know that the rule is there, and the rule is there not as an arbitrary rule.

“It is a difficult rule because sometimes people are very torn, as they were last year. But it provides the prize

‘[Choosing a winner] must be agony. But when you sign up to the Booker, you know that the rule is there’

with focus and it provides a clear narrative as to who has won. I think the rule is a sensible one and a good one.”

It has been made “abundantly clear” to this year’s jury “what the rules of the Booker are, which is that there is to be one winner”.

Mr Damazer said: “In some cases, obviously the division of the prize money (£50,000) is something of an issue. If you have an extremely well-established author, that [money] matters quite a lot less than if you’re less wellestablished.”