Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo Co-Win Booker Prize

Photo Credit: The Guardian

Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo have emerged winners of this year’s Man Booker Prize. Deciding one winner must have been a tough one for the judges that made them settle for two. According to Peter Florence, the chairman of the Booker judges, they were told that the rules state that there will only be one winner. But they flouted the Man Booker strict rules and divided this year’s prize to celebrate two winners who were announced on Monday.

Photo Credit: The Guardian

According to BBC News, it wasn’t an easy decision by the judges to rebel and award the prize to two writers this year. The judges, including author Xiaolu Guo and Editor Liz Calder, spent over three hours trying to pick a winner before asking if they could choose both but they got no for an answer. Since they were given no better choice, and since they couldn’t tell which of the two books to award, they made it known to the Booker organizers that their final decision is for the two books to be awarded. Yet, their decision was unacceptable until their third attempt thirty minutes later that the Booker Prize’s trustees accepted the decision.

Evaristo, the first black woman to win the Booker Prize won for her novel titled “Girl, Woman, Other” while Atwood, won for her novel titled “The Testaments,” which is a sequel to her 1985 dystopian classic, “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She won in 2000 for “The Blind Assassin.”

Photo Credit: BBC News

Four other novels were shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize and they include Lucy Ellmann's "Ducks, Newburyport," Chigozie Obioma’s "An Orchestra of Minorites,"  Salman Rushdie’s "Quichotte," and Elif Shafak's "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World." 

The 50,000 pounds Man Booker Prize, one of the literary world’s most prestigious prizes, will be shared among Evaristo and Atwood. Past winners include Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and J.M. Coetzee.


Olive Chinyere Amajuoyi