Booker Prize: Jury flouts directives, jointly awards Atwood, Evaristo

The prestigious Booker Prize was announced late on Monday, with shortlisted authors Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo jointly coming in for the win. The Booker rules say the prize must not be divided, but the judges insisted they "couldn't separate" Atwood's The Testament and Girl, Woman, Other by Evaristo, who is the first black woman to win the prestigious award since its creation in 1969.

The rules were changed after the last tie in 1992, and organisers told this year's judges that they were not allowed to pick two winners.

But after five hours of deliberations, Peter Florence, the chair of the five-member judging panel, said: "It was our decision to flout the rules."

The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, published in 1985, starts nearly 15 years from where the first book left off. The book gets its name from three testimonies—of Aunt Lydia who has now established power at the centre, and of teenagers Agnes Jamima and Baby Nicole/Daisy. The book moves to and forth between flashbacks and the current lives of the narrators. While the first book haunted us with the inner workings of the dystopic, totalitarian regime of Gilead, the sequel gives us a glimpse of its origins, its downfall (thankfully), and the persona of the men and women who call the shots.

Though The Testaments puts you through less of an emotional turmoil than The Handmaid's Tale which introduced you to the Republic of Gilead, Atwood leaves you on the edge—wondering if Gilead and its workings are just too real to be dismissed as 'dystopia'. And this also why this 79-year-old writer is being called an oracle or a prophet. But in her interviews, Atwood said she is not a prophet, but someone who has been keenly watching things unfold in the world; that she was just being realistic. The first book ended at a cliffhanger—where Handmaid Offred entered a van which could have taken her either to hell, or new-found freedom. We never found out—until Atwood decided to sit down and pen a sequel three decades later. Atwood also made the Booker Prize shortlist with The Handmaid's Tale in 1986. 

Gilead and Atwood's handmaids shot to fame after Hulu premiered the highly popular and critically acclaimed series, based on the book, headlined by Elisabeth Moss. The handmaids' uniform—crimson cloaks with white bonnets that hid their faces—has become the symbol of women's rights with women donning the costume on the streets in the US, in marches for women's social and reproductive rights.

Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other follows a dozen characters—mostly British and black—as they make their way through lives, negotiating the multiple mazes of colour, fluidity of gender and patriarchy. 

The judges said they strongly wanted both the authors to split the GBP 50,000 award at a gala ceremony at Guildhall. "The more we talked about them, the more we found we loved them both so much we wanted them both to win," Florence said.

Salman Rushdie, nominated for his tragicomic novel Quichotte, lost out in the race. Salman Rushdie's modern-day interpretation of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is, in the simplest terms, the literary equivalent of a Russian nesting doll. In the story, an Indian origin man—dazed by the constant bombardment of infotainment from the idiot box—believes himself to be in love with the beautiful television host Salma. He, along with his imaginary son Sancho, takes on a journey across the American heartlands to results of hilariously comic and tragic consequences. 

"A picaresque tour-de-force of contemporary America, with all its alarms and craziness. Rushdie conjures a celebration of storytelling and language that will delight lovers of Cervantes, lovers of daytime television and lovers of life," was the comment of a five-member judging panel in reference to Rushdie's latest work.

At the outset, the themes are topical, contemporary and relevant—issues of Trump presidency, political turmoil in Britain, changing landscapes of countries like India, and the opioid addiction in the US—but the story shifts to a meta format, with the writer coming into the picture. In contrast to writers like Stephen King, Rushdie was never someone who reflected on the making of his craft in his works, or indulged in any sort of examination of the same. The result: A whirlwind ride that could just be Rushdie's best work yet. 

Lucy Ellmann wass shortlisted for Ducks, Newburyport, Chigozie Obioma for An Orchestra of Minorities, and Elif Shafak for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.