A year of literary prizes and surprises in 2019

The most notorious example of misappropriation of such power this year is in the co-awarding of the Booker Prize to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo. By brazenly flouting the rules of the prize, which stipulates that the jury pick only one winner, the judges unleashed a torrent of criticism. The move was deemed especially preposterous because one of the jury members defended the choice of awarding Atwood by praising her stunning body of work, in direct contravention of the rules. The Booker Prize is conferred on a writer on the basis of one book of singular merit, not on a lifetime's achievements. While the prize committee denied any such motivation, the damage had been done, and irreversibly so.