
Margaret Atwood
No longer the bridesmaid: after three shortlistings, the prolific and multifarious Margaret Atwood garnered her first Booker Prize win with The Blind Assassin.
In the lead-up to the award, the prize administrator, the mischievous Martyn Goff, said of the year’s shortlist: ‘In 30 years, there hasn’t previously been a time when I have felt unable to forecast a winner. This year any of the six could win.’
Atwood’s novel, which contained not just a book within a book but a book within a book within a book, was a deft mixture of history, love story and a meditation on the shiftiness of truth. Time magazine later named it the best novel of 2000.
Winner The Booker Prize 2000