Booker Prize longlist names 13 novels

Elizabeth Strout, Douglas Stuart, Marlon James and Rebecca Perry are among 13 authors longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize, in a field judges described as “dynamite” and wide-ranging in setting, style and subject.

The longlist, announced Tuesday and known as the Booker Dozen, includes novels set in Mexico City, a remote Scottish island, an assisted suicide clinic in Zurich, 1980s Jamaica and Massachusetts before the 2024 U.S. election. The books span genres including thriller, dystopian science fiction and love story, NPR reported.

Mary Beard, chair of the judges, said the list has “something for everyone.”

“Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds,” Beard said in a statement. “Books are not mirrors: they don’t simply reflect ourselves back to us. One of the many important things about fiction is that it helps us see what it might be like not to be us, to begin to understand the perspectives of others, and to imagine what it might be like to see the world differently.

“Great books are not cosy. In their various ways, the novels we have chosen are (we hope) dynamite.”

The Booker Prize recognizes long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. NPR reported that eligible books must be published in English in the U.K. and/or Ireland between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30. The shortlist will be announced Sept. 22, and the winner will be named at a London ceremony on Nov. 9.

The six shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will receive a trophy and £50,000. NPR put those amounts at about $3,300 for shortlisted authors and a little more than $66,000 for the winner.

This year’s list includes two previous Booker winners: Stuart, who won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, and James, who won in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings. Stuart is longlisted for John of John, about a young gay man who returns to his strict religious family on a remote Scottish island. James is nominated for The Disappearers, a 600-page novel due to be released in September about eight gay men in Kingston, Jamaica, who are targeted by a violent mob during a play rehearsal.

Strout, a former shortlistee and third-time nominee, is recognized for The Things We Never Say, which follows a high school history teacher in Massachusetts grappling with isolation, post-pandemic social anxiety and concern about the coming 2024 U.S. election.

The longlist also includes three debut authors. Perry, who won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize earlier this month, is nominated for May We Feed the King, about a curator of historic buildings who begins exploring the life of an almost-forgotten medieval king. Kenan Orhan is nominated for The Renovation, about a psychologist caring for her father with dementia in Italy when building work goes wrong. Djamel White is listed for All Them Dogs, about a man returning to west Dublin after five years on the run because he killed someone in a gang fight.

White, 28, is the youngest longlistee. The oldest is 81-year-old M. John Harrison, nominated for The End of Everything, a post-apocalyptic novel set in a Kent coastal town.

The full longlist is: The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis; Switzy by Emma Cline; Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman; The End of Everything by M. John Harrison; The Disappearers by Marlon James; Black Bag by Luke Kennard; The Renovation by Kenan Orhan; May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry; The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley; The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout; John of John by Douglas Stuart; All Them Dogs by Djamel White; and The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams.

The judges received 163 submissions. Beard said she “occasionally felt daunted as a new box of 30 or so gleaming volumes landed on my doorstep,” but added that what she would most remember was “the eye-opening pleasure of it all.”

High-profile authors who missed the longlist include Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett, John Lanchester, Deborah Levy and Julian Barnes, the BBC reported. Last year’s Booker Prize was won by British-Hungarian author David Szalay for Flesh.