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Douglas Stuart is Marlon James, two previous Booker winners, were named in this year’s longlist, along with three other nominees. Elizabeth Strout, in the “risk pay” category.
The 13 books shortlisted for the 2026 prize, which were announced on Tuesday, include authors from seven countries on three continents, almost half of which are from the UK. Ten authors appear on the Booker longlist for the first time, including three first-time authors: Kenan Orhan, Rebecca Perry and Djamel White.
The head of this year’s judging panel is a classicist and radio personality Mary Beard, who is joined on the bandwagon by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker.
Beard said that each book in the long series “subtly expands the power of the words on the page to take readers to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.”
“I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said that I wasn’t scared at times, as a new box of 30 or more volumes landed on my doorstep,” he added.
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Booker Prize 2026 long list
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James is written at length in his fifth novel, The Disappears, set in a gay community in 1980s Jamaica, to be published in September. The judges called it a “countdown” from “one piece writing talent”. James won the award in 2015 for a Brief History of the Seven Murders. Stuart, who won in 2020 with his debut, Shuggie Bain, returns with his third book, John of John, which the judges praised for its “comprehensive, literary quality”. If he wins again, he could become the fifth writer to win the Booker twice, joining JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood.
Strout, meanwhile, is picking up his third Booker nomination What We Didn’t Say, his 11th best-selling book, which is read by Trump’s America. Strout was long-listed in 2016 for My Name Is Lucy Barton and was nominated in 2022 for Oh William!
Gaby Wood, head of the Booker Prize Foundation, said the jury’s “diverse interests” and “openness of mind” produced a list that “reflects the artistry of the book”, adding that it “rewards risk” and contains “original work”.
This series also opens the door for the first two. Chloe Aridjis, who is Mexican-British and has been recruited for a long time The shadow of the thing, he could be the first winner of the Mexican heritage with his “amazing and free book”. Kenan Orhan, Turkish-American and author of his first novel The Renovation, in which a woman realizes that her bathroom has become a prison, may be the first of Turkish heritage.
At 81, M John Harrison is the oldest on the list, which was recorded for the first time The End of Everything after 12 previous books and a stint as the sole Booker judge in 2022. If he wins, he will overtake Atwood as the oldest recipient of the award (he was 79 when he won in 2019). At the other end of the spectrum is 28-year-old Djamel White, the only Irish writer on the list, whose debut, All Those Dogs, grew out of a short story and is set in the “gangsters” of west Dublin.
A total of 163 books were submitted, all written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2025 and 30 September 2026.
Connection with Beard and Cocker on the judging panel and author Raymond Antrobus, Booker prize-nominated poet, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood, and Guardian reporter Rebecca Liu. Cocker follows in the footsteps of others in the entertainment industry who have judged the award in recent years, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Adjoa Andoh and Robert Webb.
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“I knew I was the wrong person for these crimes, but I didn’t let that get in my way,” Cocker said in response. “Knowing that the Booker prizes tend to create papers including people who are not part of the literary world – but can read! – helped me, and I thought I should bring something that others don’t have: a different perspective.”
The series also includes Emma Cline’s Switzy, out in September, which tells the story of a man’s final journey to a euthanasia clinic in Zurich; Biography of Luke Kennard Black Bag, a comedy about a struggling actor; It’s Rebecca Perry Let us feed the King, which has already won the 2026 Waterstones prize for fiction; Gwendoline Riley Palm House, literary portrait of London; and Missouri Williams’s The Vivisectors, were written as an antidote to the “cosy campus novel”.
The list will be announced at the Southbank Center in London on 22 September, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony on 9 November.
Last year’s winner was David Szalay’s Meat. Other recent winners include Samantha Harvey, Paul Lynch, Shehan Karunatilaka and Damon Galgut.
