Published 12:33 IST, October 15th 2019
Booker Prize 2019: Reasons to read The Testaments & Girl, Woman, Other
The judges of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction awarded Margaret Atwood for The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other, by breaking rules.
The judges of the 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction awarded Margaret Atwood for The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other. The judges had to ‘flout’ the rules, which were changed in 1992 after the last tie, to pick two winners for the coveted award.
Atwood's observation of totalitarianism
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, a sequel of The Handmaid’s Tale, set in the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead, with signs of the beginning of rot from within. Two women, grown up as a part of first-generation, has come of age in the new order. Their lives converge with another woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets.
“It is a savage and beautiful novel that speaks to us today with conviction and power. The bar is set unusually high for Atwood. She soars,” judges commented.
Atwood said she has always been interested in totalitarianism and how people within them got to the positions that they achieved. “What was their backstory? These kinds of regimes do ultimately end. It is my belief, they don’t go on forever,” she said.
“I made choices and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. Two roads diverged into a yellow wood and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses as such roads are, but as you will have noticed my own corpse is not among them,” Atwood read a paragraph from her book.
First-ever black woman to win Booker prize
Bernardine Evaristo became the first black woman to be awarded the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other. It was her eighth book of fiction in which she draws on aspects of the African diaspora. The book revolves around 12 main characters which to reflect on modern Britain and womanhood. The book is about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves. With never a single dull moment, the steady pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.
“This is a novel that deserves to be read aloud and to be performed and celebrated in all kinds of media,” the judges said.
Flawed and complex characters of Evaristo's novel
Evaristo thinks she writes flawed and complex characters claiming that’s how characters need to be written. “My twelve primarily Black British women are very different from each other - they are different sexualities, classes, cultural backgrounds, so on and so forth. So they cover a wide spread of black British womanhood, very real, I think they are relatable in the sense that as flawed human beings people understand who they are where they are coming from,” said Evaristo.
“At times like these Amma misses Dominique who long ago absconded to America. They should be sharing her career breakthrough moment together. They met in the 80s at an audition for a feature film, set in a women’s prison (what else?). Both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim’ and still not getting the job. They railed against their lot in a grotty Soho caff’ long before Soho became a trendy gay colony,” Evaristo read a short extract.
Updated 14:50 IST, October 15th 2019