Posted on October 15, 2019 at 8:10 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
In case you missed it: The Booker Prize judges chose their first joint winners in almost thirty years yesterday.
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other will share the award despite judges being told repeatedly that they couldn’t split the honor.
Both authors responded publicly to the unusual circumstances with grace.
Said Atwood: “It would have been quite embarrassing for a person of my age and stage to have won the whole thing and thereby hinder a person in an earlier stage of their career from going through that door.”
Evaristo — whose victory is noteworthy for other reasons, being as she’s the first black woman and the first black British author to receive the Booker — added that she was delighted to win, period. “I am not thinking about sharing it, I am thinking about the fact that I am here and that’s an incredible thing considering what the prize has meant to me and my literary life, and the fact that it felt so unattainable for decades.”
The Booker has been split twice before, once in 1974 and once in 1992, after which year the rules were changed to explicitly forbid sharing or withholding the prize.
Read more about this unusual year in the Booker Prize in the Guardian.
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Categories: Today in Books