Two former winners are among the six authors on the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist, announced on September 22. Marlon James returns with The Disappearers, having won in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings. Douglas Stuart, who won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, is in contention with John of John. Only four writers have won the prize twice.
A judging panel chaired by classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard chose the shortlist from 163 submissions and a longlist of 13 novels. Her fellow judges are poet Raymond Antrobus, musician and writer Jarvis Cocker, journalist and critic Rebecca Liu and novelist Patricia Lockwood.
“These novels range from the hilarious to the discomfiting, from the frighteningly strange to the alarmingly domestic,” Beard said.
Elizabeth Strout returns with The Things We Never Say, having made the Booker shortlist for Oh William! in 2022. M John Harrison’s The End of Everything, Luke Kennard’s Black Bag and Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King complete the list. All three authors reach the final six for the first time. Perry’s book is the only debut novel in contention. Harrison, at 81, would become the oldest winner in the prize’s history should he win.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker is given each year to a book written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The winner will be announced on November 9 in London. All six authors receive £2,500, with an additional £50,000 awarded to the winner.
Here’s a closer look at the six shortlisted novels.
The End of Everything by M John Harrison
Phillip Tennent makes a living scavenging objects washed up on the Kent coast. Years earlier, a crisis changed the world, though no-one can say exactly what happened. Government barely functions, strange creatures fill the sea, and even Europe’s whereabouts are uncertain.
Then he finds something on the beach that grows, changes form and begins to imitate human speech and behaviour. Thinking it might be valuable, he takes it inland to find a buyer. His journey brings him into contact with people who offer competing explanations for the catastrophe, sometimes resorting to violence.
Harrison combines a mystery with a darkly funny account of life after a catastrophe. Phillip never fully understands where the creature came from or what it is. People continue trading and arguing, trying to make a living even when they can no longer explain what has happened to their world. Phillip struggles to recognise intelligence in something so unlike himself.
The Disappearers by Marlon James
In Kingston in 1988, eight gay men come together to rehearse what is billed as Jamaica’s first openly gay play. They are strangers at first, with different reasons for taking part, but each knows the danger he faces. When a mob attacks a rehearsal and kills one of the men, the survivors must deal with the consequences. Some try to put the attack behind them; others want revenge.
Edmond “Eddy” Porteous, a college student who missed the rehearsal, struggles with survivor’s guilt. He joins fellow actor Jordan Brown to track down the attackers. Their search takes them into Kingston’s gay underground, where men have found ways to live under the threat of violence.
James tells the story through several voices, moving between the men’s lives before and after the assault. They disagree about how to respond, and their conversations can be funny even when the circumstances are brutal. Concealing their sexuality has offered some protection, but it has also left them vulnerable to exploitation.
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
A 37-year-old actor in London is short of work and money when a university professor offers him an unusual job. For a psychology experiment, he must zip himself into a large black leather bag and sit silently at the back of a lecture hall. Dr Blend wants to see how his students respond.
The unnamed actor accepts, but being “Black Bag” soon begins to take over his life. A professor of posthumanism becomes interested in him and asks whether someone could love a person hidden inside a bag. His flatmate Claudio, a successful gaming streamer, sees a chance to make money from the experiment.
Kennard draws on a real psychology experiment from the 1960s, though his interest lies in the man inside the bag. The actor’s attempts to earn a living expose the insecurity of working in the arts. Claudio, meanwhile, treats the experiment as another opportunity to make money online. Kennard finds comedy in the experiment and its consequences while taking the actor’s doubts about his work seriously.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
An unnamed curator arranges the rooms of historic buildings so visitors can imagine the people who once lived there. While working in a mediaeval palace, she becomes absorbed by the story of a largely forgotten king who never expected to rule.
The deaths of his two older brothers put him on the throne, though he has little appetite for power. Courtiers begin to question whether he is fit to govern, and rumours suggest someone else might take his place. Much of what we learn about him comes through other people’s observations and gossip.
Perry moves between the curator and the king’s court. The curator can convincingly recreate rooms and banquet tables, but the lives of those who used them are far harder to piece together. At court, those closest to the king watch his every move and have their own reasons for telling his story. The curator turns to his life to escape the troubles in her own. The surviving evidence leaves gaps, and those who recorded the king’s life had their own reasons for what they chose to tell.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Artie Dam teaches history at a high school in coastal Massachusetts, where he is well liked by his students. He has been married to Evie for three decades and spends his weekends sailing on Massachusetts Bay. His life looks comfortable from the outside, but he feels increasingly alone and struggles to tell anyone how badly he is coping.
Evie, now working as a family therapist, often finds Artie irritating. Their son Rob has been withdrawn since a car accident a decade earlier killed his girlfriend. Artie, who has a secret of his own, then discovers something about his past that upends everything he’s believed about his life and those closest to him.
The story takes place as the 2024 US presidential election approaches, and Artie worries about the direction of his country as well as his life. Strout’s characters talk every day, yet leave their grief and regret unspoken, sometimes for decades.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
In the 1990s, 22-year-old John-Calum Macleod returns from art school in Edinburgh to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Short of money and unsure what to do next, Cal moves back into the family croft with his father, John, and his grandmother, Ella.
John earns his living farming sheep and weaving. He is also a respected member of the local Presbyterian church, whose teachings govern his life. He dislikes Cal’s long hair and worries that his son has turned away from his faith. Cal is gay and wonders whether he might meet someone on the island. At home, he faces the same disapproval he’d hoped to escape when he left for Edinburgh. Ella stands up for him, though she has spent years trying to keep the peace with John.
John, too, has a secret. He has hidden his love for his best friend and neighbour Innes for decades. Father and son have more in common than either can easily admit, but John’s shame makes it harder for him to accept Cal’s desire to live openly. Stuart shows what years of secrecy have cost John, while Cal tries to work out whether he can stay on Harris and live openly.
Business Day
