Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have once again secured places on the Booker Prize longlist, joining Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout and a diverse mix of established and debut writers competing for the prestigious literary honour.
The 13-book semifinalists, selected from 163 novels, were announced on Tuesday for the £50,000 ($66,000) prize. Historian Mary Beard, who chairs the judging panel, described this year's selection as literary “dynamite.”
James is nominated for The Disappearers, centred on a group of gay men in 1980s Jamaica, while Stuart's John of John explores father-son secrets on a remote Scottish island. Strout is recognised for The Things We Never Say, a story set in a small New England town.
James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, while Stuart received the award in 2020 for Shuggie Bain. Strout was shortlisted in 2022 for Oh William! and won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge. The longlist also features writers with roots in Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkiye and the United States.
Three debut novelists make the cut
Three first-time authors have earned places on the longlist. Turkish-American writer Kenan Orhan is recognised for The Renovation, Rebecca Perry for May We Feed the King, and Ireland's Djamel White for the Dublin underworld thriller All Them Dogs.
At 28, White is the youngest author on the list, while 81-year-old M. John Harrison is the oldest. Harrison's The End of Everything, a postapocalyptic novel, is among the rare science fiction works to feature on the Booker longlist.
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The remaining contenders are The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis, Black Bag by Luke Kennard, The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams, Switzy by Emma Cline, Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman and The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley.
Judges celebrate bold storytelling
Beard said the judging panel, which includes Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and American novelist Patricia Lockwood, deliberately looked beyond the conventional idea of a Booker-winning novel.
Instead, the judges selected books that are “trying to expand the boundaries of how we can think about ourselves in completely different ways.”
“Sometimes they're using humour, sometimes it's pathos, sometimes there's shock value,” Beard said. “They're risk-takers. They are dynamite. They say Come on, try seeing it a different way."
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to novels from any country published in the UK and Ireland and is widely regarded as a career-defining literary award. Last year's winner was Flesh by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay.
The six shortlisted finalists will be announced on Sept. 22, with the winner set to be revealed at a ceremony in London on Nov. 9.
