Shenanigans

Also on NPR: a thrilling account of a literary-award beatdown! (Not really.) Anyway, Australia's top book prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, was given out last week, and there were a pair of winners in the fiction category: Steven Carroll's A World of Other People and Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. However, news came out later that the judges had unanimously decided to award the prize to solely to Carroll, but, according to the rules, the Australian Prime Minister has the right of "final decision" over the award's selection, and he unexpectedly chose to exercise it—without telling anyone until the night of the awards ceremony, when he suddenly insisted that the prize be split between the two authors. (Apparently, this is known in Australia as "pulling a swifty". I have no idea what that means, but still: Drama!)