The longlist for the 2026 Booker Prize has been revealed, with 13 books in contention for the annual award given to “the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.”
Marlon James, who won the Booker in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, made this year’s longlist with The Disappearers. Douglas Stuart, another previous Booker winner for Shuggie Bain, was nominated this year for John of John.
Elizabeth Strout was longlisted for The Things We Never Say, alongside Chloe Aridjis for The Shadow of the Object, Emma Cline for Switzy, Makenna Goodman for Helen of Nowhere, M. John Harrison for The End of Everything, and Luke Kennard for Black Bag.
Also making the longlist were Kenan Orhan for The Renovation, Rebecca Perry for May We Feed the King, Gwendoline Riley for The Palm House, Djamel White for All Them Dogs, and Missouri Williams for The Vivisectors.
Mary Beard, the chair of judges for this year’s award, said in a statement, “Great books have never been written to a single formula. We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone.…Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.”
The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969. Previous winners include Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for Heat and Dust, Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things, Paul Beatty for The Sellout, and David Szalay for Flesh.
The shortlist for this year’s prize will be revealed on Sept. 22, with the winner announced at a ceremony in London on Nov. 9.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
