Canada's Margaret Atwood jointly wins Man Booker Prize with British author Bernadine Evaristo

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      For only the third time, two authors have each been awarded the Man Booker Prize in a single year.

      Canada's Margaret Atwood was honoured for The Testaments, a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, which was published in 1985.

      "It is a savage and beautiful novel that speaks to us today with conviction and power," the judges commented.

      The other winner is Girl, Woman, Other author Bernadine Evaristo, who's become the first woman of African ancestry to win the Man Booker Prize.

      “A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood," the judges stated. "This is an impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves. With a dazzling rhythm, Evaristo takes us on a journey of intergenerational stories, moving through different spaces and heritages: African, Caribbean, European.

      "Her 12 main characters manifest the highs and lows of our social life. They are artists, bankers, teachers, cleaners, housewives, and are at various stages of womanhood, from adolescence to old age. Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humour. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum. The language wraps the reader by force, with the quality of oral traditions and poetry. This is a novel that deserves to be read aloud and to be performed and celebrated in all kinds of media.”

      Atwood becomes the fourth two-time winner of the Booker, having picked up the prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin. She's also been shortlisted for the Booker for other books: The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye, Alias Grace, and Oryx and Crake.

      “In many ways, The Testaments is an answer to all the questions readers have been asking me about The Handmaid’s Tale over the years," Atwood has written in the Guardian. "But it also belongs to our moment of history, when things in a number of countries seem to be heading more toward Gilead than away from it”.

      Here's what Evaristo wrote in the Guardian about the story behind her book:

      “Fiction excavates and reimagines our histories; investigates, disrupts, validates and contextualises our societies and subjectivities; exercises our imaginations through flights of fancy, takes the reader on transformational adventures, and probes and presents our motivations, problems and dramas.

      "What, then, does it mean to not see yourself reflected in your nation’s stories? This has been the ongoing debate of my professional career as a writer stretching back nearly forty years, and we black British women know, that if we don’t write ourselves into literature, no one else will."

      In 1993, the rules were changed to ensure that only one author could win the prize. But that didn't dissuade the judging panel from choosing two winners this year.

      “This 10-month process has been a wild adventure," the panel's chair, Peter Florence, said in a news release. "In the room today we talked for five hours about books we love. Two novels we cannot compromise on. They are both phenomenal books that will delight readers and will resonate for ages to come.”

      The other judges were Liz Calder, Xiaolu Guo, Afua Hirsch, and Joanna MacGregor, who reviewed 151 books that were submitted.

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