Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo have been named the joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize after the judges broke their rules by declaring a tie.

Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo have been named the joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize after the judges broke their rules by declaring a tie. 

Atwood's The Testaments, the Canadian writer's follow-up to The Handmaid's Tale, was recognised alongside Londoner Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other. 

It is 19 years since Atwood won the Booker for The Blind Assassin, and 33 years since she was nominated for The Handmaid's Tale, and as for Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other is the 60-year-old’s eighth novel. It gives a chapter each to the lives of 12 intertwining characters, who are mostly black British women. Atwood, 79, is the oldest ever Booker winner, while Evaristo sets a precedent as she is the first black woman to win.