BERNARDINE EVARISTO today (Sep 4) soared onto this year’s Booker Prize shortlist when judges whittled down the 13 contenders to six.
Evaristo, who lectures at Brunel University London is shortlisted for her eight novel Girl, Woman Other and will receive £2,500 and a special bound edition of her book, alongside the five other contenders .
Girl, Woman, Other tells the tangled tales of a group of British black women whose interwoven lives span several decades. Judge and author Xiaolu Guo called it “impressive and fierce… there is never a single moment of dullness”.
Taking to Twitter on Tuesday (Sep 3), Evaristo wrote: “I am so happy to announce that my twelve womxn in #girlwomanother have made the #BookerPrize2019 shortlist and will be accompanying me to the 'Booker Ball'!!! I hope they behave themselves. And what a stellar line-up of fellow shortlisted writers. Thanks To the judges. Gratitude.”
The British-Nigerian creative writing professor is up against former Booker Fiction Prize winners Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie.
Margaret Atwood’s shortlisted novel The Testament, which publishes on Tuesday 10 September, is a long-awaited follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, and former winner Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte retells Cervantes’ Don Quixote set in today’s USA.
Evaristo also shares shelf with Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, Nigerian Chigozie Obioma and Lucy Ellman whose novel,Ducks, Newburyport, is a massive 998-page-long stream of consciousness.
The winner will be revealed on October 14.