LONDON – Esteemed past Booker Prize laureates, Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, find themselves contenders once more for the celebrated fiction prize. They’re joined by narratives of Dublin street life, futuristic sci-fi, and characters sprung from New England’s heart, crafted by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.
After pouring over 163 novels, judges have distilled their choice down to 13 semifinalists for this year’s Booker Prize—worth £50,000 ($66,000). Mary Beard, the panel’s historian leader, illustrates this list as being packed with literary “dynamite.”
Featured contenders include James’ “The Disappearers,” set in an unfriendly 1980s Jamaica where a group of gay men struggles, Stuart’s “John of John,” exploring hidden truths between a father and son on a secluded Scottish isle, and Strout’s poignant “The Things We Never Say,” rooted in small-town life.
James previously captured the Booker Prize in 2015 with “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” while Stuart was lauded in 2020 for his novel “Shuggie Bain.” Strout, whose “Oh William!” was a finalist last year, took home the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 with her unforgettable “Olive Kitteridge.”
These literary heavyweights stand alongside newer voices from a diverse Booker longlist, featuring talent from across Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkey, and the United States, each vying for the prestigious honor.
Three of those on the list are debut authors: Turkish-American writer Kenan Orhan for family history story “The Renovation,” British author Rebecca Perry for Medieval-to-modern tale “May We Feed the King” and Ireland’s Djamel White for “All Them Dogs,” a thriller set in the Dublin underworld.
White, at 28, is the youngest author in the running. The oldest is 81-year-old M. John Harrison, whose postapocalyptic tale “The End of Everything” is a rare science fiction novel to make the Booker list.
The other 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 Gwendoline Riley’s “The Palm House.”
Beard said the five jurors, who include Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and American novelist Patricia Lockwood, tried to look beyond the idea of a typical Booker winner – “slightly serious, about to be classic.” Instead they chose novels that are “trying to expand the boundaries of how we can think about ourselves in completely different ways,”
“Sometimes they’re using humor, 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 has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers and is open to novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland. Last year’s winner was “Flesh” by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay.
The judges will announce six finalists on Sept. 22, and the winner will be revealed Nov. 9 at a ceremony in London.
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