{"id":2199,"date":"2026-10-30T12:34:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/booker-prize-2026-a-diverse-list-to-inspire-all-sorts-of-readers-six-experts-review-the-nominees\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T12:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T12:34:36","slug":"booker-prize-2026-a-diverse-list-to-inspire-all-sorts-of-readers-six-experts-review-the-nominees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/booker-prize-2026-a-diverse-list-to-inspire-all-sorts-of-readers-six-experts-review-the-nominees\/","title":{"rendered":"Booker prize 2026: a diverse list to inspire all sorts of readers \u2013 six experts review the nominees"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Booker prize was first launched in 1969, its aim was to get more people reading and to stimulate discussion about contemporary literature. Now, we all know reading is at an all time low but there really has never been a better time to reignite your love of fiction and to discover (or rediscover) your love of reading. And, this year\u2019s shortlist is really a testament to the breadth of stories available out there.<\/em> <\/p>\n

There\u2019s poetic historic fiction<\/a> with May we Feed the King about a reluctant medieval king from Rebecca Perry. For lovers of science fiction, M. John Harrison has written a tale about aliens and social collapse set on the Kentish coast. And, there\u2019s laughter to be found in Black Bag by Luke Kennard about an out-of-work actor who lands a gig in a psychological experiment.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are also new works by previous winners and nominees. Marlon James is back with a startling portrait of the lives of gay men in Jamaica. Douglas Stuart gives us his chilly Hebridean family drama, John of John. And, finally there\u2019s the gentle political commentary of Elizabeth Strout\u2019s The Things We Never Say about what happens when good people stay quiet.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Ahead of the prize being announced on November 9, we\u2019ve asked six experts to guide you through the nominations for 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

Black Bag<\/a> by Luke Kennard<\/h2>\n

Black Bag was inspired by a 1967 experiment at Oregon State University<\/a> in which an individual cloaked in black sat mutely in a seminar for a semester. Where the study focused on the reactions of the witnesses, Black Bag is the story and meditations of the man who becomes increasingly attached to his role and, amusingly, his bag. <\/p>\n

Kennard\u2019s protagonist is a flat-broke actor relying on cash-in-hand corporate murder mysteries and the kindness of his friend Claudio in an otherwise dismal world. Wearing the bag outside of the classroom not only removes the problem of how to be but even attracts the attention of a female professor who wants \u201cto fuck nothing\u201d \u2013 he is both strikingly visible and anonymous. The novel is laugh-out-loud funny but melancholy and provocative too. Some of Bag\u2019s strongest relationships are those he imagines, like ongoing conversations with his parents\u2019 dog and narrated village life with a fictional Swedish wife.<\/p>\n

By Tory Young, associate professor in English literature<\/em><\/p>\n

The End of Everything<\/a> by M. John Harrison<\/h2>\n

The backdrop of The End of Everything is alien invasion, but treated with a ludic contempt for genre conventions. An ineffectual war is being waged against the sardonically named iGhetti \u2013 amorphous entities who have leaked into the world \u201cfrom the astral plane\u201d. Phillip Tennent, a beachcomber somewhere on the Kent coast, finds an iGhetti artefact washed up by the tide, a thing that slowly begins to ape humanity, an event which throws Tennent\u2019s life and the life of his ageing, forgetful aunt, Marnie, into brutality and random violence.<\/p>\n

In his 2023 \u201canti-memoir\u201d, Wish I Was Here<\/a>, M. John Harrison writes of his world-building: \u201cI\u2019d rather pile up real facts to reveal something evidently unreal than pile up invented facts to make something unreal seem real.\u201d The real facts pile up here \u2013 cheek by jowl with dense allusion and the surreal \u2013 into a work of slippery unreality, which is nevertheless congested with raw feeling and startling poetry.<\/p>\n

Tim Jarvis, senior lecturer in creative writing<\/em><\/p>\n

The Things We Never Say<\/a> by Elizabeth Strout<\/h2>\n

Elizabeth Strout\u2019s slight book is a series of snapshot insights into the thoughts and memories of protagonist, Massachusetts Bay high school History teacher Artie Dam. With Artie at the centre, it captures the problems, relationships, and futures of a community: extended family, students, colleagues, whose lives connect unexpectedly, or are influenced by brief interactions \u2013 statements of support or honesty. Sometimes, Artie worries he lies through kindness; he isn\u2019t to know that his positivity manifests unexpected joys.<\/p>\n

Nominated for the prize three times before, Pulitzer-winner Strout\u2019s elegant text is both melancholic and evocative.<\/p>\n

Measured, thoughtful, and good, Artie Dam is caught up in political, socioeconomic, personal, and philosophical questions threatening to derail his life. These also bring him closer to people he loves, including his son Rob and his extravagant, reckless friend, Flossie. Artie clings on to the possibility of free will while the reader hopes that everything will work out well for Artie.<\/p>\n

Jenni Ramone, associate professor of postcolonial and global literature<\/em><\/p>\n

The Disappearers<\/a> by Marlon James<\/h2>\n

The Disappearers pulls the reader into a seemingly knowable time and place \u2013 the Jamaica of 1988 to 2005. Yet what James seeks to make known and felt is not to be found in any record or archive. <\/p>\n

The action begins as eight men gather to rehearse John Herbert\u2019s provocative and unsettling 1967 US prison play Fortune and Men\u2019s Eyes about homosexuality and sexual power play. A homophobic mob storms a rehearsal and by the end of the evening, one man is murdered and another blinded. Shortly afterwards, two disappear. Six years later, the search for the disappeared continues and the novel makes it clear that gay men in Jamaica disappear way before anyone notices they\u2019ve gone.<\/p>\n

In Marlon\u2019s writing of their differences in class, ethnicity, social privilege, sexual preference, desire for attachment, emotional intelligence, eloquence, and identity constructions, the novel writes away the enforced flatness of slurs and stereotypes of gay men to humanise at scale. It\u2019s an everyday act of narrative restitution that has revolutionary significance given the continuing sexual politics of Jamaica.<\/p>\n

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\n Read more:
\n The Disappearers: Marlon James\u2019s new novel gives voice to the gay men Jamaica erased<\/a>
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Alison Donnell, professor of modern literature<\/em><\/p>\n

John of John<\/a> by Douglas Stuart<\/h2>\n

An omniscient narrator presides over John of John as we follow John-Calum Macleod \u2013 Cal \u2013 a recent Edinburgh art school grad, who has been studying fashion and textiles. Learning that his maternal grandmother Ella is ill, Cal is persuaded to return home by his lay-preacher father, John, during one of their weekly phone calls.<\/p>\n

Once home, we\u2019re witness to the claustrophobic dysfunction of the Macleods\u2019 home, a small croft where John rears sheep, weaves tweed, and has strong connections to the \u201cWee Free\u201d church. John struggles to show anything other than contempt towards his son, who has come home with growing debt and orange hair.<\/p>\n

As a young gay man hailing from a strict and repressive Free Presbyterian background, Cal remains still in the closet as far as his island is concerned. The torment and guilt of his sexuality weigh heavily on Cal throughout the novel. <\/p>\n

The drama and (sometimes verging on implausible) twists of this book make it feel like a soap opera, in the traditional sense of the term: small, interconnected characters and high melodrama, with domestic spaces as scenes of desire, revelation and unpredictability. But this is not a criticism. Stuart\u2019s lyrical prose and atmospheric narrative elevate the genre \u2013 reimagining the domestic and familial tropes by focusing on the unrequited affections of the men in the story.<\/p>\n

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\n John of John: weaving an island tale of secrets that lie beneath repression and shame<\/a>
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Stevie Marsden, lecturer in publishing<\/em><\/p>\n

May We Feed The King<\/a> by Rebecca Perry<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This is a poet\u2019s novel, without the seductive immersion more usual for those on the Booker shortlist. In three parts, the first and last are narrated by a person \u2013 their sex is never given \u2013 whose job is creating food scenes in historical sites. Following a never specified tragedy, they are commissioned to create a tableaux in a former palace. In the archive they come across a page detailing the failings of a medieval king. The middle part of the novel is that king\u2019s story. <\/p>\n

While the narrator\u2019s work is about bringing the past close, the novel itself is an exercise in distance. We are told very little about the tableaux maker; the characters in the middle section are known only by their roles. <\/p>\n

This distance enacts the novel\u2019s central questions about history and storytelling, but it is not a cold distance. The novel is full of passages of beauty and delight. The narrator\u2019s description of a website that sells replica food made me laugh and took my breath away.<\/p>\n

Leigh Wilson, professor of English literature<\/em><\/p>\n

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Alison Donnell has received funding from AHRC and The Leverhulme Trust. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Jenni Ramone, Leigh Wilson, Stevie Marsden, Tim Jarvis, and Tory Young do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Booker prize was first launched in 1969, its aim was to get more people reading and to stimulate discussion about contemporary literature. Now, we all know reading is at an all time low but there really has never been a better time to reignite your love of fiction and to discover (or rediscover) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}