For the third time since inception, Booker Prize judges last night announced two winners in a very competitive race with six amazing novels, writes OLUKOREDE YISHAUJUDGES last night broke the Booker Prize rules for the third time by declaring joint winners: Seventy-nine-year old Canadian author Margaret Atwood and Anglo-Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo. Evaristo is the first black woman to win the Booker.Atwood won with Testaments and Evaristo with Girl, Woman, Other. The winners will share 50,000. The ceremony, which held at Londons Guildhall, was aired live on the BBC.Belfast-born author Anna Burns won last years prize with her coming-of-age novel Milkman.Winning one of the most prestigious literary awards in the English-speaking world increases book publicity and sales.The rules were changed after the last tie in 1992. The award was also shared in 1974.The organisers told this years judges not to pick two winners. But the judges said after five hours of deliberations, they had no choice but to break the rules.The chair of the judges, Peter Florence, said: It was our decision to flout the rules.Gaby Wood, literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said of the decision against splitting the prize: The thinking was it just doesnt workit sort of detracts attention from both, rather than drawing attention to either.The chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, Baroness Kennedy, was against splitting when she was informed. She was quoted to have said: Absolutely not.But Florence said: The more we talked about them, the more we found we loved them both so much we wanted them both to win. We all found that we were torn.The judges said they tried voting, but it did not work. Florence said the winning books have urgent things to say.They also happen to be wonderfully compelling, page-turning thrillers, which can speak to the most literary audience, to readers who maybe are only reading one, or in this case I hope two books a year, and can speak at different levels to all sorts of different readerships. So in that sense they are I hope and believe really valuable Booker Prize winners, he told reporters.Journey to decisionThe long journey to picking a winner began months back with a long-listing and a shortlist.The shortlist had Atwoods The Testaments, Chigozie Obiomas An Orchestra of Minorities, Evaristos Girl, Woman, Other, Lucy Ellmanns Ducks, Newburyport, Elif Shafaks 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World and Salman Rushdies Quichotte. Canadian author Atwood won the coveted prize in 2000 and Rushdie in 1981 with Midnights Children and made the shortlist again in 1983, 1988 and 1995.Atwoods The Testaments is a sequel to her The Handmaids Tale, which was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize. It is described as a subtle, moral novel that is both a clear response to the urgency of the political moment and an attempt to reach beyond the headlines.Set 15 years after the final scene of The Handmaids Tale, the characters are second generation of handmaids, with three women providing a different perspective on the Gileads patriarchal totalitarianism.Seventy-nine-year old Atwood won the 2000 Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin. She was also shortlisted for the prize in 1986, 1989, 1996 and 2003.The chair of the judges, Peter Florence, described The Testaments as a savage and beautiful novel that speaks to us today with conviction and power.Obiomas An Orchestra of Minorities, compared to his debut The Fishermen, which also made the shortlist in 2015, is longer, more ambitious and, to some critics, better. It is narrated by the spirit of a chicken farmer. This sprit is known as chi in Igbo cosmology.The book tells the love story of Chinonso, a chicken farmer, who falls in love with Ndali, the daughter of a rich man who is also better educated. His rejection by Ndalis family pushes him to seek better education overseas, but he falls into the hand of a fraudster who pretended to be a friend. He is imprisoned and by the time he is able to return to Nigeria, his love has slipped into the hand of another. His attempt to reclaim his love fails and tragedy sets in.This multilingual novelEnglish, Igbo and pidginis a superlative attainment for the 1986, Akure-born Obioma, who is an Assistant professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.I see myself as a guy who is trying to preserve some of the culture that we used to have at pre-colonial times, Obioma said about An Orchestra of Minorities.Evaristos Girl, Woman, Other is told from multi-perspectives. It is about twelve black British women. Their narratives are intertwined and in fluid lyrical sentences with poetic touches. Evaristo explores the hidden narratives of the African diaspora and subverts expectations and assumptions.A Judge, Xiaolu Guo, described it an impressive, fierce novel about modern Britain and womanhood that deserves to be read aloud.A reviewer, Alex Preston, said of the book: I was often reminded of great documentary historians such as Tony Parker and Studs Terkelthe lives presented here leap off the page, building into a tapestry that is at once moving and funny, deceptively simple and yet a powerful commentary on the state of our divided nation, taking in issues of race, gender identity, migration and colonialism. A novel that makes you question whether it should strictly be called a novel is by default a good thingthis is a book that pushes at the limits of the genre and leaves you feeling lucky to have spent time in the presence of a writer of such warm-hearted wisdom.Anglo-Nigerian author Evaristo, who was born in London in 1959, is a first timer on the Booker Prize shortlist. This is her eighth book.Ellmanns Ducks, Newburyport is one of those revolutionary novels. It breaks rules and his voluminous. This monologue by an Ohio housewife runs into over 1,020 pages tackling issues of interest to her folk. She reflects on her past, her family and her country. One of the judges, Joanna MacGregor, described the book as a genre-defying novel, a torrent on modern life [and] a hymn to loss and grief.Ellmann, who was born in Illinois in 1956 and now based in Edinburgh, is the only U.S. author on this years shortlist.Elif Shafaks 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is the tale of Tequila Leila, a prostitute left for dead. In the last 10-and-a-half minutes of her life, she recalls an existence of depressing ruthlessness and abuse.Set in Istanbul, Judge Liz Calder, a publisher and editor, described the book a work of fearless imagination.Salman Rushdies Quichotte is a rewriting of Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote. It is Rushdies 14th novel. It tells of an ageing travelling salesman driving across America to win over a TV star. The novel, according to jury chair Florence, pushes the boundaries of fiction and satire.Changing rulesThe current rules stipulate that the prize may not be divided. It also shows that to be considered for the award, the submitted book must be a unified and substantial work, thus making short stories ineligible. The late V.S. Naipaul won with a short story.In 2010, there was an interesting ceremony. An administrative decision which shifted the Booker Prize eligibility dates led to the exclusion of books published in 1970. To rectify the exclusion, 22 novels published in 1970 were considered for what was deemed The Lost Booker Prize in 2010, with the late J. G. Farrells Troubles receiving the prize posthumously.Another interesting development in the annals of the prize is the change, which saw American authors being eligible for the prize once their works are published in the UK and Ireland.
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