The Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist Is Here
Six novels have made the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist, chosen from 163 books submitted for this year’s prize. The selection takes readers from a post-apocalyptic Kent coast to 1980s Jamaica, a medieval court, a university campus, Massachusetts and the Outer Hebrides.
There are familiar names on the list. Marlon James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, while Douglas Stuart won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain. Elizabeth Strout has also been nominated before. The other three authors are appearing on a Booker shortlist for the first time.
The Six Shortlisted Books
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
On the Kent coast after a catastrophe, Phillip Tennant survives by scavenging with his aunt. Society has collapsed and a mysterious alien presence adds to the uncertainty around them. Harrison’s novel mixes dystopian fiction with satire and mystery, offering a rather unusual place to start if you fancy something strange and unsettling.
The Disappearers by Marlon James
Set in Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1980s, this novel begins with the murder of a gay actor rehearsing for a play and follows the consequences of that violence. James returns to the Jamaica of his earlier Booker-winning novel, this time telling a story about survival, loss and retribution.
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
A struggling actor accepts a peculiar job: he must spend a university term attending lectures zipped inside a large black bag, as part of a psychology experiment. It’s an absurd premise, but the novel also explores identity, relationships and the way people respond to someone they cannot see. If you’re looking for humour with a more serious thread running through it, this may be the one that catches your eye.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
Perry’s debut novel moves between an unnamed medieval court and a present-day curator preparing displays in a historic palace. At the centre of the older story is a reluctant monarch surrounded by expectation and intrigue. By placing these two worlds together, the book asks who gets to tell history and how much of the truth can survive its retelling.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Artie Dam is a teacher in coastal Massachusetts whose life appears comfortable from the outside. Beneath that surface, he feels increasingly isolated. Set against the run-up to the 2024 US election, Strout’s novel turns its attention to the private troubles people carry and the things they find difficult to share.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
John-Calum MacLeod, a young art graduate, returns reluctantly to his home on the Isle of Harris in the 1990s. His return brings him back into the orbit of his father and a deeply religious community where expectations are hard to escape. It is a story of family, identity and the weight of returning to a place that still thinks it knows you.
Which One Would You Read?
What makes this shortlist interesting is how different the books sound. Black Bag offers an outlandish starting point, May We Feed the King plays with the way history is presented and The End of Everything takes us into a collapsed world. The other three turn towards secrets, family and the pressures of living within a community.
The winner will be announced on Monday 9 November 2026. There’s time to pick up one of the six before then, perhaps even make your own prediction. Which book would you choose?
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