Atwood, Evaristo jointly win 2019 Booker Prize

(Reporters Today, Bhubaneswar): Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and British author Bernardine Evaristo were named the joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize on Monday night here after the judges broke the rules and declared a tie.

Atwood became the fourth author to win the prize twice, this time for The Testaments, which is a sequel to her acclaimed work The Handmaid’s Tail. The Testament is the Third sequel to have won the prize, following Pat Parker’s The Ghost Road (1995) and Hilary Mantel’ Bring up the Bodies (2012).

Atwood, last won the award in 200 for her work The Blind Assassin. She had also been shortlisted for four of her other books.

Evaristo, who bagged the award for Girl, Woman, Other became the first black woman to claim the prize since it began in 1969.

The winners were chosen by a panel of five judges. The two works were chosen from 151 submitted books.