This year's Booker prize longlist is headlined by two previous winners: Marlon James and Douglas Stuart. James returns to Jamaica in The Disappearers, a polyphonic epic about a murderous mob attack on a gay theatre group in 1988 Kingston and its aftermath. Stuart's John of John follows a young gay man returning to his childhood home on the Hebridean island of Harris, exploring faith, repression and fading traditions.
Returning Favorites and New Voices
Elizabeth Strout earns her third nomination with The Things We Never Say, introducing new characters to her universe, while Emma Cline's Switzy depicts a high flyer with dementia traveling to a euthanasia clinic in Zurich. The longlist also includes British author Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House, exploring a long friendship in London, and M John Harrison's The End of Everything, a surreal vision of England in decline.
Experimental and Absurdist Trends
Judge Patricia Lockwood told the Observer that "in the face of AI and the fractured attention span, I think we’re going to see a new avant garde that insists on the participation of the human … there is a new, weird literature emerging." This year's list features several wildly original works, including Missouri Williams' The Vivisectors, Rebecca Perry's May We Feed the King, and Makenna Goodman's Helen of Nowhere. Kenan Orhan's The Renovation uses Kafkaesque absurdity to explore migration and political repression, while Luke Kennard's Black Bag is a comic romp about a man in a leather bag. Djamel White's debut All Them Dogs and Chloe Aridjis's The Shadow of the Object round out the list. The shortlist will be announced on 22 September.
