Margaret Atwood, Evaristo Named Joint Winners of 2019 Booker Prize

This means that Margaret Atwood and Evaristo split the 50,000 pound ($63,000) purse.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@alexalter)

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and British author Bernardine Evaristo have split the Booker Prize, after the judging panel ripped up the rulebook and refused to name a single winner for the prestigious fiction trophy.

Chairman Peter Florence said Monday, 14 October, that 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.”

Gaby Wood is literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation and says prize trustees repeatedly told the judges they couldn't have two winners, but they "essentially staged a sit-in in the judging room." Wood insists the decision "doesn't set a precedent."

It means Atwood and Evaristo split the 50,000 pound ($63,000) purse.

79-year-old Atwood is the oldest-ever Booker winner, while Evaristo is now the first black woman to win.

The four other authors who were nominated are – Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities, Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World and Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte.

(With inputs from AP.)