The Booker prize judges’ decision to break the rules and jointly award the prize to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo has been criticised, with detractors pointing out that the first black woman ever to win Britain’s most prestigious literary award has had to share it – while receiving half the usual money.

Chair of the judges Peter Florence shocked the literary world on Monday night when he revealed that the jury had decided – unanimously, he said – to flout rules, which have been in place since 1992, that the Booker “may not be divided or withheld”. After more than five hours of deliberation, he announced that this year’s £50,000 award would be split between Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, and Evaristo’s polyphonic novel Girl, Woman, Other. Told in the voices of 12 different characters, mostly black women, Evaristo has said that the novel, her eighth, stems from the fact that “we black British women know that if we don’t write ourselves into literature, no one else will”.

When pressed on Monday night if Evaristo would miss out on the attention afforded a single Booker winner, Florence said that splitting the prize means that “we would like to give equal prominence to these two people … I would also suggest quietly that Bernardine Evaristo is a very highly established writer who, whilst there is no one in quite the same [fame] bracket as Atwood, is not someone who is totally unknown or likely to disappear.”

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo review – joy as well as struggle Read more

Evaristo becomes the first black woman, and the first black British writer, to win the Booker since it was launched in 1969. She said after the announcement: “I hope that honour doesn’t last too long. I hope other people come forward now”, and thanked the judges, who include “two women of colour, making history”. Asked if she would have preferred to win the full £50,000, she said: “What do you think? Yes, but I’m happy to share it. That’s the kind of person I am.”

Others condemned the decision. Sunny Singh, co-founder of the Jhalak prize for the best book by a writer of colour, said she was furious at the news, while a former Booker judge, who asked to remain anonymous, said they felt it was a “huge disappointment that the chance to make history emphatically was passed by”.

Sam Leith, another former Booker judge, called the decision to split the prize an “epic fail”, which sets “a rotten, rotten precedent” and is “unfair on both authors”.

“Bernardine, on stage, spoke very graciously about how thrilled she was to be sharing the prize with ‘the legend that is Margaret Atwood’. But, as she was too gracious to say, it obviously would have been even more thrilling to have beaten that legend into joint second place,” he wrote in an essay.

“The suspicion in the reading public’s mind will be that one or other of these considerable authors was being patronised; that something extra-literary had entered into the considerations of the panel, that the judges were trying to have their cake and eat it. Had they given it a single one, that would not have been possible in the same way. They could have said, simply: this book is first among equals.”

Eishar Brar, editorial director at publisher Knights Of, felt it was “incredibly short-sighted for the prize to be split in the year it’s awarded to the first black woman to receive it”.

“The judges claim they wanted to acknowledge the importance of both books in their cultural context, but this decision completely ignores the context of Bernardine’s win,” said Brar. “The split decision is now the overwhelming narrative when the sole focus should be on this historic and long overdue first.”

Sana Goyal, digital editor at Wasafiri magazine, mourned how the “judges’ rule-breaking antics took precedence over what could’ve been a truly record-smashing, history-making, trajectory-altering move for the prize”.

“The case is less about Atwood being undeserving,” she wrote, “and more about wholly and fully rewarding, validating, and celebrating the first black (British) woman to win the Booker Prize for ‘fiction at its finest’.”

Others were happy just to celebrate Evaristo’s win – including Atwood, who told Evaristo on stage: “I kind of don’t need the attention, so I am very glad that you’re getting some.”

Wasafiri’s publishing director Malachi McIntosh said that the magazine “couldn’t be more excited that [Evaristo] won the Booker”.

“For years she’s been writing the kind of formally ambitious, panoramic, socially engaged novels that have been the prize’s hallmarks,” he said. “On the one hand, it’s incredible that it’s taken so long for a black British woman – for a black woman from anywhere – to win the prize; but on the other hand, I can think of no one else more deserving. Hopefully this makes more readers discover her classics like Lara, The Emperor’s Babe, and Blonde Roots.”

Sharmaine Lovegrove, publisher at Dialogue Books, said: “It was an extraordinary night and the split of the prize shows that it is totally subjective what is considered the ‘finest fiction’. It was a great night for feminists, and for black women and women making history is always a step towards equality.

“I respect that the judges pushed for what they thought was best. We live in weird times and to be disruptive keeps us on our toes. Atwood was incredible and generous and Evaristo is a winner!”