Booker Prize announces longlist of 13 books. Some will please, some will shock, says judge

According to the Booker Prize Foundation, this year’s longlist ‘rewards risk’. The judges read and debated over seven months before arriving at the list.

13 books longlisted for Booker Prize 2026 | Photo: thebookerprizes.com

New Delhi: The Booker Prize 2026 longlist was announced Tuesday with former winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, and three debut novelists among the 13 authors in the running.

The longlist, chosen from 163 submissions, includes the following works:

1. The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis
2. Switzy by Emma Cline
3. Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman
4. The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
5. The Disappearers by Marlon James
6. Black Bag by Luke Kennard
7. The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
8. May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
9. The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
10. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
11. John of John by Douglas Stuart
12. All Them Dogs by Djamel White 
13. The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

The Booker Prize is awarded to long-form fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. This year’s judging panel is chaired by classicist and writer Mary Beard. Poet Raymond Antrobus, musician and writer Jarvis Cocker, journalist Rebecca Liu, and novelist Patricia Lockwood are the other judges.

According to the Booker Prize Foundation, this year’s longlist “rewards risk”. Beard said the judges read and debated over seven months before arriving at the list.

“Great books have never been written to a single formula… There’s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there’s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there’s the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock,” Beard said.

A closer look at the longlist

James, who won the Booker in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, is longlisted for The Disappearers. The novel is set in late 1980s Kingston and follows eight male actors rehearsing what is billed as Jamaica’s first openly gay play. The judges said it “examines territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy”.

Stuart, who won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, returns with John of John. The novel follows a 22-year-old art student who returns from Edinburgh to his home on the Isle of Harris. The judges said they “loved the rich, textural detail of the story”.

If either James or Stuart wins, they would become the fifth writer to win the Booker twice, after JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood.

Strout is nominated for The Things We Never Say. She has been previously shortlisted for the 2022 Prize for Oh William! and was longlisted in 2016 for My Name is Lucy Barton.

There are three debut novels on the list. In Orhan’s The Renovation, a Turkish exile asks builders to renovate her bathroom and finds that they have built a prison cell connected to Istanbul instead. Perry’s May We Feed the King moves between a modern-day museum curator recreating historical banquets and a reluctant medieval king. White’s All Them Dogs, set in West Dublin’s gangland, follows two violent associates whose criminal lives are complicated by feelings of mutual attraction.

White, 28, is also the youngest writer on the longlist. Harrison, 81, is the oldest. If Harrison wins for The End of Everything, he would become the oldest winner in the prize’s history.

The longlisted authors are from England, Ireland, Scotland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkey, and the US. The shortlist will be announced on 22 September. The winner will be announced on 9 November and will receive £50,000. Each shortlisted author will receive £2,500.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)