UPPSC 2019 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 78 of 150

Correct — D, Bernardine Evaristo (the paper prints 'Bernadine'). Her novel 'Girl, Woman, Other' won the Booker Prize for 2019, and with it she became the first black woman to win the Booker. The 2019 prize was unusual in one specific way that the question quietly depends on: the jury, chaired by Peter Florence, refused to separate two books and split the award, so the 2019 Booker was shared between Evaristo for 'Girl, Woman, Other' and Margaret Atwood for 'The Testaments'. That breached the prize's own rule, in force since 1993, that the award may not be divided. Because both winners appear in the option list, the only thing that decides the question is the book named in the stem — 'Girl, Woman, Other' is Evaristo's, so the answer is (d) and not (a).

• (a)Margaret Atwood — The sharpest distractor in the paper, and a half-right one. Atwood did win the Booker Prize for 2019 — jointly with Evaristo — but for 'The Testaments', her sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale', not for 'Girl, Woman, Other'. At 79 she was the oldest winner in the prize's history. A candidate who remembers 'Atwood won the 2019 Booker' and stops reading the stem loses the mark here.
• (b)Elif Shafak — Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist who writes in both English and Turkish and was much discussed in the 2019 literary season, but she is not the author of 'Girl, Woman, Other' and did not win the 2019 Booker Prize.
• (c)Salman Rushdie — Rushdie's Booker is a much older one — he won in 1981 for 'Midnight's Children', which was later voted the best of all the winners in the prize's anniversary polls. He did not write 'Girl, Woman, Other' and was not a 2019 winner. His name is included precisely because 'Booker' and 'Rushdie' sit together in most students' memory.

The Booker Prize is the leading award for a novel written in English. Its eligibility rule has changed twice in ways worth knowing: until 2013 it was open only to writers from the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe, and from 2014 it opened to any novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Its sponsor also changed — the Man Group's sponsorship, which gave the world the name 'Man Booker Prize' from 2002, ended in 2019, after which the award reverted to being called simply the Booker Prize. A separate International Booker Prize honours a book translated into English, with the money split equally between author and translator.

The reason this question is worth its mark is that the paper-setter has put both 2019 winners in the same option list — the only exam year in which that was possible, because the 2019 prize was shared. The discipline it rewards is reading the stem to the end: the question does not ask who won the 2019 Booker, it asks who wrote 'Girl, Woman, Other'. Note also that the paper misprints both the title ('Girl, Women, Other' for 'Girl, Woman, Other') and the author's first name ('Bernadine' for 'Bernardine'). Neither misprint changes the answer, and UPPSC did not treat them as grounds for a grace mark — a useful reminder that you answer the question the commission printed, not the one it meant to print.

• 'Girl, Woman, Other' was written by Bernardine Evaristo, a British author, and won the Booker Prize for 2019.
• The 2019 Booker was shared: Evaristo and Margaret Atwood ('The Testaments') were declared joint winners by a jury chaired by Peter Florence.
• That split broke the prize's own rule, in place since 1993, that the award cannot be divided between two books.
• Evaristo became the first black woman to win the Booker Prize; Atwood, then 79, became its oldest winner.
• The prize was open only to Commonwealth, Irish and Zimbabwean citizens until 2013; from 2014 it has been open to any novel written in English and published in the UK.
• Man Group sponsored the award from 2002 to 2019 — which is why older questions call it the 'Man Booker Prize' and newer ones simply the Booker Prize.

• Answering 'who won the 2019 Booker' when the question asks 'who wrote this specific book' — in 2019 both answers are correct for the first question and only one for the second.
• Assuming a prize is never shared. The Booker was shared in 2019 despite its own no-sharing rule, and the Nobel Prizes in the sciences are routinely divided among up to three laureates.
• Treating 'Man Booker Prize' and 'Booker Prize' as different awards — they are the same prize, renamed when the Man Group's sponsorship ended in 2019.

UPPSC asks the book-to-author or author-to-book pairing for whichever literary prize made news in the year before the exam; UPSC has historically preferred the rules of the prize — who is eligible, who sponsors it, who has won it twice — so learn the award's structure alongside the current winner.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Booker Prize for 2019 was shared between Bernardine Evaristo and which of the following authors?

  • (a)Hilary Mantel
  • (b)Margaret Atwood
  • (c)Elif Shafak
  • (d)Anna Burns

  Answer(b) Margaret Atwood — she was declared joint winner for 'The Testaments', the sequel to 'The Handmaid's Tale', alongside Evaristo's 'Girl, Woman, Other'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  With reference to the Booker Prize, consider the following statements: 1. Since 2014 it has been open to any novel originally written in English and published in the United Kingdom, irrespective of the author's nationality. 2. The International Booker Prize money is divided equally between the author and the translator. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  • (a)1 only
  • (b)2 only
  • (c)Both 1 and 2
  • (d)Neither 1 nor 2

  Answer(c) Both 1 and 2 — the eligibility rule was widened from the Commonwealth-and-Ireland pool with effect from 2014, and the International Booker splits its prize money equally between author and translator.