The Booker Prize has unveiled its 2026 longlist, selecting 13 novels from 163 submissions with former winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James joined by Pulitzer laureate Elizabeth Strout in a field judges described as “dynamite.”
Chair of the judges Mary Beard said the panel was “confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone,” spanning settings from a remote Scottish island to an assisted suicide clinic in Zurich, 1980s Jamaica, and post-apocalyptic Kent. The annual literary award, among the world’s most prestigious, recognizes long-form fiction by writers of any nationality written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
Three Returnees Headline the Booker Dozen
Three of the 13 longlisted authors are previous Booker shortlistees. Strout earns recognition for The Things We Never Say, which follows a Massachusetts high school history teacher wrestling with isolation, post-pandemic anxiety, and the looming 2024 US election. Stuart, who won the 2020 Booker for Shuggie Bain, returns with John of John, about a young gay man who returns to his strict religious family on a remote Scottish island.
Marlon James, the 2015 Booker winner, lands on the longlist with The Disappearers, a 600-page novel about eight gay men in Kingston, Jamaica, targeted by a violent mob during a play rehearsal. His entry is the longest book on the list. The shortest is Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere, a 140-page novel about a disgraced professor touring a countryside house and learning about its previous owner.
Debut Novelists and a Wide Age Range
The longlist spans 53 years between its youngest and oldest authors. Djamel White, 28, is recognized for his debut All Them Dogs, about a man returning to west Dublin after five years on the run following a killing in a gang fight. M John Harrison, 81, earns a spot for The End of Everything, a post-apocalyptic novel set in a Kent coastal town.
Two debut novels made the cut. Kenan Orhan’s The Renovation follows a psychologist caring for her dementia-suffering father in Italy when building work goes awry. Rebecca Perry, who won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize earlier this month, also appears with May We Feed the King, about a curator of historic buildings who begins exploring the life of an almost-forgotten medieval king.
The Full Booker Dozen in Context
Beyond the marquee names, the longlist offers an eclectic mix. Emma Cline’s Switzy, due in September, follows a wealthy, accomplished man traveling to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland. Chloe Aridjis’s The Shadow of the Object traces an encounter in a Mexico City hospital that leads to a life-changing friendship. Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House follows a London freelancer and her long friendship with a senior magazine editor.
Missouri Williams’s The Vivisectors follows a graduate student in a decaying university city overrun by wild plants. Luke Kennard’s Black Bag centers on a penniless out-of-work actor paid to zip himself inside a large black leather bag and sit silently at the back of a university lecture hall for a psychological experiment.
The 13 longlisted books are: The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis, Switzy by Emma Cline, Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman, The End of Everything by M John Harrison, The Disappearers by Marlon James, Black Bag by Luke Kennard, The Renovation by Kenan Orhan, May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry, The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley, The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, John of John by Douglas Stuart, All Them Dogs by Djamel White, and The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams.
Notable Omissions From the Booker Prize Longlist
Several high-profile authors missed the cut, including Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett, John Lanchester, and Deborah Levy. Julian Barnes, widely tipped for his final book Departure(s), also failed to make the list — a surprise to many industry observers who had expected the veteran novelist to contend.
The five judges — Beard, poet Raymond Antrobus, novelist Patricia Lockwood, critic Rebecca Liu, and musician Jarvis Cocker — read all 163 submissions. Beard joked she “occasionally felt daunted as a new box of 30 or so gleaming volumes landed on my doorstep,” but added: “What I shall most remember is the eye-opening pleasure of it all, and what I learnt about reading and the power of fiction from my fellow judges.”
What Happens Next
The Booker Dozen will be narrowed to a shortlist of six on 22 September. Each shortlisted author receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner, announced on 9 November, takes home £50,000 and a trophy. The literary award has historically delivered a major sales boost for the victorious title.
Beard emphasized the transformative ambition of the selected novels. “Books are not mirrors: they don’t simply reflect ourselves back to us,” she said. “One of the many important things about fiction is that it helps us see what it might be like not to be us, to begin to understand the perspectives of others, and to imagine what it might be like to see the world differently. Great books are not cosy. In their various ways, the novels we have chosen are (we hope) dynamite.”
Last year’s Booker Prize went to British-Hungarian author David Szalay for Flesh. Whether the 2026 winner emerges from the established names or the debut ranks remains an open question until November.
— Lucas Berg, culture desk, AXO News