LONDON – Former Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart are back in contention for one of fiction’s most coveted honors, joining a wide-ranging field that spans Dublin gangland, dystopian science fiction and the New England lives imagined by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.
The 13 semifinalists for the 50,000 pound ($66,000) Booker Prize were announced Tuesday after judges considered 163 novels. Historian Mary Beard, who chairs the judging panel, described the longlist as literary “dynamite.”
Among the standout titles are James’ “The Disappearers,” centered on gay men navigating a hostile Jamaica in the 1980s; Stuart’s “John of John,” which explores buried father-son secrets on an isolated Scottish island; and Strout’s tender small-town novel “The Things We Never Say.”
James previously won the Booker in 2015 for “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” while Stuart took the prize in 2020 for “Shuggie Bain.” Strout was shortlisted in 2022 for “Oh William!” and received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009 for “Olive Kitteridge.”
The celebrated names appear alongside emerging voices on a geographically diverse Booker longlist, with authors connected to Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkey and the United States.
Three nominees are making their debuts: Turkish-American writer Kenan Orhan with the family history novel “The Renovation,” British author Rebecca Perry with the medieval-to-modern “May We Feed the King,” and Ireland’s Djamel White with “All Them Dogs,” a thriller set in Dublin’s criminal underworld.
At 28, White is the youngest writer on the list. The oldest is 81-year-old M. John Harrison, whose postapocalyptic novel “The End of Everything” marks a rare appearance for science fiction on the Booker longlist.
Rounding out the field are Chloe Aridjis’ “The Shadow of the Object,” Luke Kennard’s “Black Bag,” Missouri Williams’ “The Vivisectors,” Emma Cline’s “Switzy,” Makenna Goodman’s “Helen of Nowhere” 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.
