Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo Share Booker Prize – The New York Times

Evaristo, a speculative author who is well developed in Britain however not widely known worldwide, is a more unexpected choice. In her eight works of fiction, Evaristo, who was born in London in 1959 to a white English mom and a Nigerian dad, frequently explores the lives of members of the African diaspora. “Girl, Woman, Other” features a dozen characters, the majority of them black British ladies. It’s written in a blend of poetry and prose, a hybrid that Evaristo calls “combination fiction.”

In an interview with The Times on Monday night, Evaristo said that the unique outgrew her frustration over the absence of representation in British literature.

“When I began the book six years back, I was so fed up with black British ladies being absent from British literature,” she said. “So I wanted to see the number of characters I could put into an unique and pull it off.”

The other novels on the shortlist included Lucy Ellmann’s “Ducks, Newburyport,”a 1,000 page novel about a middle-aged lady in Ohio assessing her life while baking, which unfolds nearly completely in a single sentence; Chigozie Obioma’s “An Orchestra of Minorities,”about a Nigerian poultry farmer called Chinonso who stops a lady from jumping to her death and falls for her; Salman Rushdie’s“Quichotte,”a retelling of”Don Quixote”that features a taking a trip salesman on a quest to win over a lovely television host; and Elif Shafak’s “10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World,”a story about a sex worker in Istanbul who is murdered and left in the garbage on the

borders of the city. Compared to previous years, in which Americans were greatly represented, authors from the United States were limited this year. The sole American on the shortlist is Ellmann, a native of Illinois who now resides in Scotland.

Evaristo and Atwood will split the reward money of 50,000 pounds, around $63,000, although the Booker, first awarded in 1969, usually delivers a sales increase.

Anna Burns’s”Milkman,” a speculative unique about a lady during Northern Ireland’s civil conflict, has actually offered over 500,000 copies considering that winning the reward last year.

The Booker is one of the literary world’s most distinguished prizes. Past winners consist of Rushdie, who was

shortlisted for this year’s reward, along with such literary heavyweights as Hilary Mantel and J.M. Coetzee. Atwood now signs up with Mantel, Coetzee and Peter Carey in the small club of authors to have actually won two times.

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“Girl, Woman, Other” includes a dozen characters, most of them black British females.”When I started the book six years back, I was so fed up with black British ladies being absent from British literature,” she said. Compared to previous years, in which Americans were greatly represented, writers from the United States were scarce this year. And listen to us on the

Book Review podcast.

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