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Ok I thought it was something new. That was clearly not a leak.

Lots of coverage about the Booker Prize in today's Guardian:

As one of the articles above states, this must be infuriating for previous judges who had to follow the rules painfully and dutifully in the past.

Val McDermid this today:

Two terrific books.
But... when I was a judge last year, we were told categorically, more than once, that the prize absolutely could not be shared. Am feeling slightly baffled.

Sam Leith, another previous judge, wrote :

This sets a rotten, rotten precedent. The handshake agreements that have previously governed the judging could well firm into legal contracts; the valuably theatrical tradition that the final meeting takes place on the day (also practical since it helps prevent leaks) might well go by the board. And even with such notional safeguards established, what’s to prevent judges throwing a similar strop in future years. You let them split the prize two ways: why can’t we split it three ways this year?

Epic fail.

Susanne wrote: "I feel that the term non-White somehow puts the attention back on whiteness and how it is a social construction"

Yeah, I can see the problems with 'non-white,' that's why I qualified it with a context, and not as an all-encompassing descriptor for the overwhelming majority of the world's population! But I still find it more neutral and less political than the lazy 'POC.'

I grew up in a country where there are no white people, so I never thought of myself as 'non-white' because there was no need of it.

I was blissfully ignorant of racial identity politics growing up over here. Not that we didn't have our own issues with colourism, but the first time I became aware of my 'brown-ness' was when I visited England as a young lad.

Before, I had never thought of myself as 'brown' or even Asian and wouldn't put myself into categories as ethnic minorities in the West do.

It's tough - and tiring.

Edit:
PS: Apologies. I digress.

Something else we should strongly consider...

Our collective and justified "outrage" as dedicated readers, plus the mass disappointment from prior judges and other literary figures all plays into the Booker organization's plan.

I am staying steadfast to my opinion that all the above, the past three months, and everything that has transpired the last 24 hours is EXACTLY what they planned and what they were hoping for. The collective "outrage," the tweets, the gasps, the article think pieces, the comments on Instagram, etc., is all what they want and it's working.

Meaning: when publicity is what you crave in order to stay relevant, as the Booker organization so desperately needs, no finger wagging or eye rolling from the public will deter you. As I've said before, I think the Booker organization planned for Atwood to win months ago, and I think they orchestrated all the previous stunts I mentioned in my comments #251 and #265, and now they're simply sitting back and letting it all play out.

In other words, we've been had and they're laughing all the way to the literary bank. At least two judges on that panel who had a conflict of interest, were planted specifically for this outcome and it worked like a charm. If I had to guess, I'd say the entire panel was instructed to vote Atwood, or if they chose not to, the award would be split. The two conflict of interest judges voted Atwood, two had a conscience and voted Evaristo, the fifth made the pre-planned call to split.

What we can hope for now is that an insider or a judge pulls the lid off the whole charade. If not, this scenario will repeat itself for years to come. Gone are the days of integrity and credibility when likes, retweets, and think pieces are the currency needed to keep an institution relevant.

The Booker is not the first or only organization to do this: viral marketing and publicity-by-outrage is king nowadays and many are cashing in.

Did you hear aliens landed at Roswell?

Gumble's Yard wrote: "Did you hear aliens landed at Roswell?"

The rules of this group instructs us not to troll, so I'll interpret your comment as an attempt at humor and not as an insult.

I stand by everything I've said. If you were active on social media as I am, you might understand better the point I'm making. You don't have to though, it's all just my opinion.

Good day.

I am taking the directors at their word that they pushed back a few times and weren’t getting anywhere. I don’t necessarily think they had a mandate for Atwood to win. That said, I think what the chair said should be taken with a massive grain of salt. I don’t think the judges were unable to choose between the two because they all loved each equally. I think there were some fireworks behind the scenes. I am kind of surprised we don’t already know a bit more…so maybe I’m wrong!

And thanks Cindle for not getting provoked!

C I N D L E wrote: "Something else we should strongly consider...

Our collective and justified "outrage" as dedicated readers, plus the mass disappointment from prior judges and other literary figures all plays into ..."

So far this is a conspiracy theory. But conspiracies do happen. Whether it was fixed or not, something funny was definitely going on behind the curtains. I hope some insider is brave enough to spill the beans and let the Booker people clear the mess.

Does anyone have access to this full article? (I'm not based in the UK)

I am also a conspiracy theorist. I think The Testaments was contractually guaranteed to win - or at least mandated to win by the Booker Prize organisation - and the judges rebelled.

I'm really not sure any fiction book is *that* big that there would be an actual contract for something like this. People in journalism and publishing are often privy to embargoed information - making a contract would suggest it were a far more extraordinary situation and/or that it was unprecedented for these people to have access to something of this nature.

And why on earth risk making the plan public by telling whoever it is puts stickers on copies, weeks in advance? Those will not be very highly paid staff, and it's work that can be done in a few hours, even by one person. It doesn't need a long lead time.

But at any rate, I reckon that a minimum of two judges (at least one per book) dug their heels in and insisted that they would only agree to their backed book winning.

I was embarrassed for Margaret Atwood with all the hoopla around the release of The Testaments. Her work should stand on its own without all the hype. Now this book, which avid readers and critics seem to agree was not her best, no shame in that, every book can’t be a writer’s best book, is co-awarded with a book that was truly deserving of the award. I am a bit surprised Atwood went along with it all.

I agree with GY, this kind of controversy is more amusing then serious. Not to cast a pall over the fun, but while I was fuming over the news that Ducks did not win, I saw the news that a young Syrian politician and advocate for women was pulled from her car, raped and stoned to death by a Turkish fringe group the same day as the Booker announcement. She was 35 yrs old. It put my disappointment in perspective.

We need these small outrages to take our minds off more serious matters, that is why we read and debate, and go to far, apologize, go to far again, apologize again, and move on to the next batch of books to battle over.

I didn't pass the Foyle's window, but I passed a Barnes & Noble today in my car (or I would've taken a picture.) The Booker Winner banner was up & ONLY The Testaments was in the windows. Of course, GWO isn't out yet here in the US, but this is why it's SO bad to have two winners. If I was Evaristo's US publisher, those books would be available ASAP (like now.) It is possible for prize winners to move dates up, and it's done pretty regularly here.

I agree with the Times Literary Supplement (there's something I don't say often):

Girl, Woman, Other, which follows the lives of 12 characters, most of whom are black, British and female, would have made an ideal winner in its own right.

Abell said: “It’s a great book which explores characters of colour in a completely fresh way. Atwood already has the spotlight."

"Now instead of having the full beam of publicity shone on her, Evaristo will always have an asterisk next to her win, which is a great shame.��

ETA: I'm not enamoured with the term POC, but I haven't figured out a better one. I agree w/ Wendy that BAME is marginally better. They both share the problem that any person fitting these broad categories allows many institutions to simply check the diversity box and move on without making any real change.

ETA 2: Thanks for the much nicer pictures!!!

I am prepared to believe the sticker was an honest mistake. Someone just used the wrong sheet of stickers sent in the pack and - given that two books were winners - had a one in three chance of landing on the eventual winner.

And I can also understand displays of The Testaments as the winner - after all, bookshops will have cases of this in stock and are unlikely to have more than a few copies of GWO.

But what I can't readily accept is the panel unanimously landing on two titles ad being unable to separate them despite a clear rule to prohibit joint winners and a multitude of possible ways to resolve the dilemma. And when that is coupled by the special legal agreements that the judges apparently had to sign to gain access to The Testaments ahead of the launch, it looks like things were already departing from the norm for this title. Ordinarily, publishers are pleased to submit their titles and will change their own plans to comply with the competition's rules, not vice versa.

Has it been mentioned anywhere that this was the first time ever that Booker judges had to sign an agreement to read an unpublished book? I would be a little surprised if it was, as in previous years they have probably read some very high-profile titles which weren't longlisted. And as they weren't listed, the judges couldn't mention it. Here, the book was longlisted and the news about the NDA formed another plank of the marketing campaign to build excitement with the public.

But_i_thought, I have read that Times article.

It is basically rehashing things everyone else has said with a slightly comic tone eg “bow ties rotated in outrage at the dinner in Guildhall, central London��

It does claim though, albeit based on character rather than specific gossip, that the Chair:

- would have demanded a big name on the the list (it quotes someone calling him a “star f****er��);
- would have loved the publicity of breaking the rules.

The article then unfortunately descends into the same tone as last year’s Times take on The Milkman. Ie its biggest accusation is that the Prize picks obscure/experimental books from unknowns or politically correct choices of authors (it cites Ducks, the Obioma and bizarrely Quichotte) rather than popular and talented authors. Bizarre.

I seriously think The Times has some sort of booker envy. Not sure why, but it feels very weirdly personal.

PS - Amazon US now has copies of Girl Woman Other available & they are down to 19 after one day of selling.

Afua Hirsch on the judges decision:

Well argued article and someone I very much admire.

Good to see also that she hasn't chosen to go into the blow-by-blow details of the deliberations, but rather express strong support for their collective decision.

I did speak to her Monday night after the announcement, just to express my respect for the jury having the courage to do what they saw as the right thing, given the flak they would inevitably get (see the comments already on the article). My wife also happened to speak to her yesterday on the school run.

Some of the phrasings in the piece, however, puzzle me a bit:

How do you judge the titanic career, the contribution to culture of Margaret Atwood, against the sheer beauty of Elif Shafak’s Istanbul? How do you compare the haunting Igbo tragedy, told by Chigozie Obioma’s Odyssean narrator, to the Ulysses-like audacity of Lucy Ellmann? How do you pit the phenomenon of Salman Rushdie against the quality and consistency of Bernardine Evaristo, who was in my view hitherto hugely underrated?

The way it’s put there seems to me as though Atwood was judged in terms of her “titanic career�� and “contribution to culture�� over the years, not on the basis of the novel. As a matter of fact, only Obioma and Ellmann get a direct reference to the shortlisted book (the narrator in the former, the modernist tradition in the latter), whereas it’s more vague with the rest, e.g. Rushdie, not Quichotte, is a “phenomenon.��

Might be I’m just nitpicking.

Sounds like we may only get the real story years later (the 'blow-by-blow details') as has happened with various other old Booker decisions.

Tommi wrote: "Some of the phrasings in the piece, however, puzzle me a bit:

How do you judge the titanic career, the contribution to culture of Margaret Atwood, against the sheer beauty of Elif Shafak’s Istanbu..."

I find it shallow, but she's not my friend. It's all rather Rumpian: "Trust me, folks, you just don't know the truth or what's good for you, so stop being snowflakes and calm down. The rules don't apply to us."

Tommi wrote: "Some of the phrasings in the piece, however, puzzle me a bit:

How do you judge the titanic career, the contribution to culture of Margaret Atwood, against the sheer beauty of Elif Shafak’s Istanbu..."

I read her comments to question what criteria should the judges use to make their decision. The considerations have broadened since the Harold Bloom days and one set of criteria seems in conflict with another.

The comments on that article are picking up on exactly what you noted above, Tommi.

Comment excerpts:

"How do you judge the titanic career, the contribution to culture of Margaret Atwood, against the sheer beauty of Elif Shafak’s Istanbul?"

You're not meant to be judging her career. You're meant to be judging her latest book. I think we've identified the problem here. You were scared of snubbing Atwood.

------

Absolutely. That first sentence might equally have read "what chance did Elif Shafak's mere book stand against the immense public profile of Margaret Atwood?"

------

Sounds to me like you've completely missed the point. You're not supposed to be judging Margaret Atwood's "titanic career" and "contribution to culture", or "the phenomenon" of Salman Rushdie. It's not a lifetime achievement BAFTA. Just the quality of these particular books as they stack up against the other books on the list. Pretty basic stuff.

The comments below that article, including the comments on my comment, are why I usually avoid reading the below the line comments on the Guardian.

In terms of getting the blow-by-blow, hopefully we never get it. If any judge disagreed they should have walked otherwise one is bound by collective responsibility. However fun the gossip has been in the past, it is rather demeaning, particularly those judges who have let it be known they didn’t support the winner. Pleasingly in recent years, not just this, the judges have presented their decision as unanimous.

Does anyone know why the rule was introduced? Sharing the prize was allowed from 1969-1992, but it only happened twice in that time.
One could argue that choosing a compromise book which no jury member thinks is the best book, but none of them dislike too much, is more of a cop out than sharing the prize between the jury's two favourites.

I can ask Gaby Wood this evening but I think in simple terms to stop this kind of debate happening

So far we have one group assuming Atwood only won due to either at worst fix or at best due to her career (many of us here somewhere in this camp I think), another group assuming that Evaristo was awarded the award due to tokenism (eg a chunk of the Guardian BTL commentators are assuming this) and others somehow thinking this stopped their favourite third book winning (eg one publisher had just posted to this effect on twitter)

It would be interesting to make the decision meetings public (video or transcribed). After all, there are arts discussion programmes in which works are discussed in detail and critically, so it shouldn't really be any different from those in terms of how it reflected on the panellists and authors.

Val, the rule was introduced for 1993 after the joint award in 1992. It wasn't a regular occurrence anyway so it seems a bit superfluous. We've now ended up with another one after a similar span of time, regardless of the new rule. (1974, 1992, 2019)

Val wrote: "One could argue that choosing a compromise book which no jury member thinks is the best book, but none of them dislike too much, is more of a cop out than sharing the prize between the jury's two favourites."

And that exact cop-out scenario happened in 1979 and the jury then let it be known publicly that the winner was everyone's second choice.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "So far we have one group"

There is a fourth group who are delighted with the outcome and think the judges did the right thing. May have only six members though - me and the 5 judges!

There are similarities to Atwood's win with Testaments and McCarthy's winning the Pulitzer Prize with The Road a few years back. What is surprising is that over time McCarthy's novel has fared well with critics despite its many flaws. Perhaps the same will happen with Testaments.

Incidentally in terms of Atwood winning the prize for lifetime achievement, the judges have been quite explicit....

What is really interesting is that nobody thought Margaret Atwood’s novel was her best book. Where Simon’s mental agility paid off was in persuading us all (except Mariella) that Atwood deserved the prize anyway - for all the times she’d nearly won it and had been pipped at the post by a lesser writer.

Except that was in 2000! (from the Guardian booker history)

Antonomasia wrote: "It would be interesting to make the decision meetings public (video or transcribed). After all, there are arts discussion programmes in which works are discussed in detail and critically, so it sho..."

Jonathan Coe, 1996 judge:

Anyone who sets great store by the choices of Booker prize panels should remember this: the process consists of nothing more rigorous than five people sitting in a room together for a few hours, swapping personal opinions. And as far as I remember, not a single judge (including me) ever changed his or her mind, or shifted his or her position, in response to an argument put forward by a colleague.

How did the bookies handle the situation?

Paul wrote: "Incidentally in terms of Atwood winning the prize for lifetime achievement, the judges have been quite explicit....

What is really interesting is that nobody thought Margaret Atwood’s novel was he..."
That's a bit unfair of them. The Blind Assassin is a fantastic book-in my opinion but not the judges' apparently.

Thanks Gumble and Anto.
I gather the 1992 result was criticised at the time, but there have been quite a few Booker controversies over the years which have not led to rule changes.

Susanne wrote: "Paul wrote: "Incidentally in terms of Atwood winning the prize for lifetime achievement, the judges have been quite explicit....

What is really interesting is that nobody thought Margaret Atwood’s..."

Well it says 'her best' rather than 'the best' and her best is arguably the Handmaid's Tale which lost out to Old Devils in 1986. That year was almost a split prize as well:

We were still going to and fro up until 10 minutes before the press announcement had to be made: two strongly for Amis, two equally strongly for Davies (What’s Bred in the Bone), and a wobbler in the middle. At the last moment the wobbler came down on the side of The Old Devils, and Amis had won.

(all from )

And What's Bred in the Bone seems to have aged much better, according to both the average rating and the friend rating on GR. Robertson Davies is one of those authors whom friends recommend every now and again, and although I like the sound of the books, can't see how I'll ever get round to.

I’m not impressed with two winners, but it’s certainly generating a lot of debate. I’ve just been reading a very interesting, but ten year old Guardian article, of Booker judges dishing the dirt. It’s worth a read if you haven’t come across it before. A common theme seems to be that judges never change their minds about their favourite/ least favourite books, no matter how much debate takes place and that compromises often happen, where no ones favourite book wins. Also, most of the judges never want to repeat the process again! Here’s the link

Oh and the comments on Atwood’s previous win attest to her being awarded the first time for her body of work, not the novel, which was considered quite weak. So same again this time maybe.

An interesting opinion piece here:



Particularly:

What the judges seem not to have appreciated is that the really important thing about literary prizes isn’t to facilitate arguments among booklovers. It's to sell books, whether they be the crime novels�� Gold Dagger Award, the scientifically-focused Wellcome Trust Prize, or the Champions League of book prizes, the Booker itself.

The reality is that splitting the prize has two consequences: the first is that the story becomes the judges and their self-indulgence and self-regard rather than the books involved; the second is that inevitably, the attention will be focussed on the justly famous Margaret Atwood not on Evaristo.

What he has failed to appreciate is that the point of a prize is not to sell books. And also that G,W,O seems to be selling quite nicely - no 9 on the Amazon UK list for all books, and temporarily sold out.

And I find the personal tone of a lot of these articles appalling :"if you lack the basic intelligence and empathy to understand why that’s what your job is a prize judge", as if a group of educated, erudiete, well-read people didn't know what they were doing, and rather more so than the New Statesman's political editor.a group of highly intelligent.

Meanwhile the headline in the Bookseller, the magazine for people who sell books, "Booker double welcomed by booksellers".

Sam wrote: "How did the bookies handle the situation?"

The bookies paid out on both winners. I picked up my winnings yesterday for my Evaristo bet.

Joe wrote: "Sam wrote: "How did the bookies handle the situation?"

The bookies paid out on both winners. I picked up my winnings yesterday for my Evaristo bet."

Thank you. That is interesting. I would have thought the two winners would have canceled the bet.

Paul wrote: "What he has failed to appreciate is that the point of a prize is not to sell books. And also that G,W,O seems to be selling quite nicely - no 9 on the Amazon UK list for all books, and temporarily ..."

Fair enough.

To me, the entire situation feels bittersweet as The Testaments was easily the weakest book I’ve read all year (it also ranked lowest in the M&G dynamic rankings), whereas Girl Woman Other was by far the strongest book on the list (in my opinion, also matching M&G rankings).

Perhaps I’m being naïve in thinking that the ultimate winner should come down to the literary merit of the book in question, not an author’s “titanic career�� (Hirsch’s phrase).

But_i_thought_ wrote: "Perhaps I’m being naïve in thinking that the ultimate winner should come down to the literary merit of the book in question, not an author’s “titanic career�� (Hirsch’s phrase)."

I thought that was obvious, but it seems the judges had a different idea of what they're tasked to do. I don't want to be too harsh on the judge who said that, but they should know better than to make such strange statements which go against the very nature of the prize.

In any case, shortlisting a well-known and wildly popular writer tends to skew the outcome in their favour because the judging panel is so overwhelmed by the author's profile that they lose the strict focus on the one book they are tasked to assess. When I saw Atwood and Rushdie on the shortlist I was quite certain one of them would win - and why not if either of them had written the best book of the lot.

But_i_thought_ wrote: "Perhaps I’m being naïve in thinking that the ultimate winner should come down to the literary merit of the book in question, not an author’s “titanic career�� (Hirsch’s phrase)."

You are not naive. This is what I and many readers of literary fiction expect literary award judges to consider when choosing a book for a prestigious award. The judges had ONE job, and they failed, miserably! This wasn't for the Nobel Prize in literature, it was to choose ONE book that was "the finest fiction," and they couldn't even do that.

I personally call into question their collective intelligence as a group of five, because yes, the judges' abysmal decision makes the 2019 award all about themselves - in extension all about the Booker organization, and not about the true winner, Evaristo.

It's a total sham and the judges deserve blame too. That five great literary minds could not foresee the biased end results with the misguided (and crooked) precedence they've set tells me they were not the right five people for the task.

In essence, they've awarded a mediocre book written by a veteran author, Atwood, and they've concurrently taken away the shine and glory of an author who single-handedly deserved this prestigious award, Evaristo. The judges (and the Booker organization) have done a irreparable disservice to Evaristo.

Who wants to always have a parenthesis or asterisk next to their name every time they or their body of work is written about in the press because three or all five judges in fall of 2019 didn't have foresight or a conscience when deliberating? This is essentially what the judges have done to Evaristo and it is shameful.

C I N D L E wrote: "Who wants to always have a parenthesis or asterisk next to their name"

In fairness, I don't think Michael Ondaatje, who shared the prize with Barry Unsworth, usually has an asterisk next to his name. I was only aware recently that he had shared it, but always been vaguely conscious he had won it. The controversy will likely fade and she will remain a Booker winner.