Booker-winners Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie back on 2019 shortlist

The 2019 Booker Prize Shortlist sees women make up four of the six finalists. Photo: Booker Prize

Two previous winners, Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, were shortlisted on Sept 3 for the Booker Prize for the best English-language fiction to be awarded in October.

Canadian author Atwood has been nominated to the six-person list for The Testaments, her hotly anticipated sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale due out later this month. Judge Peter Florence said the book was “a savage and beautiful novel that speaks to us today with conviction and power. The bar is set unusually high for Atwood. She soars.”