The Booker Prize 2026 longlist, announced Tuesday, brings together 13 novels that range from post-apocalyptic Kent to the ganglands of West Dublin, from an assisted-suicide clinic in Zurich to the barren hillsides of the Outer Hebrides. Two former winners—Marlon James (2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings) and Douglas Stuart (2020 for Shuggie Bain)—lead a field that includes three debut novelists and ten first-time nominees, representing seven countries across three continents.
Mary Beard, the Cambridge classicist, broadcaster, and author of the bestselling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, chairs the judging panel. A Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge, and a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, Beard is joined by poet Raymond Antrobus, musician Jarvis Cocker, journalist Rebecca Liu, and Booker-shortlisted novelist Patricia Lockwood. They selected from 163 submissions published in the UK or Ireland between October 2025 and September 2026.
Booker Prize 2026 Longlist: Meet the Books
Tap a title to read its synopsis
The Shadow of the Object
Chloe Aridjis
A woman recovering from a dog bite in a Mexico City hospital strikes up a spellbinding friendship with an elderly collector of pre-cinema toys, then returns to London where the line between imagination and reality starts to blur.
Judges called it a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality.
Switzy
Emma Cline
A retired American executive with dementia travels across Europe toward an assisted-death clinic in Zurich, his fading memories surfacing as an assistant shepherds him through a final, fractured pilgrimage.
Praised as a hypnotic, darkly humorous portrait of a life unravelling.
Helen of Nowhere
Makenna Goodman
A disgraced professor tours a countryside home with a realtor, who tells him about Helen, the house's enigmatic former owner — and what he might have to give up to live as simply as she did.
Judges called it philosophically and spiritually adventurous.
The End of Everything
M. John Harrison
In a post-apocalyptic Britain where the seas hold strange new creatures, a beachcomber salvages a shape-shifting object he can't keep — one that threatens to undo everything he thinks he understands.
Described by judges as shimmering, oblique, and about "now."
The Disappearers
Marlon James
Eight gay men rehearsing what's billed as Jamaica's first openly gay play are attacked by a mob in 1980s Kingston; years later, a survivor sets out to trace what became of the others.
James previously won the Booker Prize in 2015.
Black Bag
Luke Kennard
A broke actor takes a bizarre job sitting zipped inside a bag through university psychology lectures, setting off a satire on masculinity, online life and unlikely love.
Judges praised its sharply crafted sentences and humour.
The Renovation
Kenan Orhan
A Turkish exile hires builders to renovate her bathroom for her ailing father — and finds they've installed a fully functioning Turkish prison cell instead, pulling her back toward the homeland she left behind.
Judges called it a hilarious fantasy with an unsettling side.
May We Feed the King
Rebecca Perry
A museum curator who stages historic banquets becomes absorbed in the story of an almost-forgotten, reluctant medieval king facing whispers that he's unfit to rule.
Judges called it a delicate meditation on history and storytelling.
The Palm House
Gwendoline Riley
Two old friends navigate a hostile magazine takeover, a lost father and a precarious London life, in a wry, closely observed study of long friendship.
Judges praised its minimalist, precise dialogue.
John of John
Douglas Stuart
An art-school dropout returns to the Isle of Harris, caught between his devout sheep-farmer father and his Glaswegian grandmother, as an insular community's fragile peace comes undone.
Stuart previously won the Booker Prize in 2020 for Shuggie Bain.
All Them Dogs
Djamel White
Back in West Dublin's gangland after years away, a man is drawn into a dangerous new partnership with a rival enforcer, where loyalty, attraction and self-preservation collide.
Judges called it a ballsy, unsentimental debut with a real ear for dialogue.
The Vivisectors
Missouri Williams
In a vine-choked university city ruled by feuding academics and rogue gardeners, an assistant is ordered to spy on a student at the centre of a scandal — and finds herself drawn to him instead.
Judges called it genuinely experimental and, in places, truly menacing.
The Things We Never Say
Elizabeth Strout
A history teacher in small-town Massachusetts seems settled in his marriage and community, but is quietly consumed by isolation — until a long-hidden truth surfaces and forces him to rethink everyone closest to him.
Judges praised its understated prose for quietly exposing the cracks beneath ordinary family life.
James, who won the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, returns with The Disappearers (Hamish Hamilton), his first non-fantasy novel since that victory. Set in late-1980s Kingston, the novel follows eight gay men who become the targets of a brutal homophobic mob attack during a play rehearsal. The judges called it “a reckoning” from “a singular literary talent,” saying that it examines “territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy.” At roughly 600 pages, it is the longest book on this year’s list.
Stuart, who won in 2020 for his debut Shuggie Bain, appears for John of John (Picador). The novel follows a young gay man, Cal, who returns to his childhood home on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, where he finds himself caught between his devout father John, who has his own secrets. The judges praised the novel’s “rich, textural detail” and its “excavation of family, violence, and shame.”
Elizabeth Strout, a Pulitzer Prize winner, receives her third Booker nomination for The Things We Never Say, which introduces us to a middle-aged Massachusetts high school teacher grappling with isolation, post-pandemic social anxiety, and the approaching 2024 U S election.
From Zurich to the post-apocalyptic Kent Coast
The longlist also features Emma Cline’s Switzy (Chatto & Windus), a novel that follows a retired business executive with dementia as he journeys toward a medically assisted death in Zurich. The judges described it as “immersive, elegiac, and very real.”
M John Harrison’s The End of Everything (Serpent’s Tail) offers a slyly satirical post-apocalyptic vision set on the Kent coast, which the judges called “a book not just about everything but about now.” Gwendoline Riley, long admired for her spare and unsparing prose, appears for The Palm House (Picador), a novel of enduring friendship set against the precarity of London life. The judges praised it as “minimalist, precise, and indelible.”
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Three debut novelists appear on the list: Kenan Orhan for The Renovation (Hamish Hamilton), a surreal tale in which a Turkish exile’s home renovation produces an unexpected prison cell; Rebecca Perry for May We Feed the King (Granta), which dances between the life of a medieval king and a museum curator in the present day; and Djamel White for All Them Dogs (John Murray), a gritty West Dublin gangland novel that the judges called “mouthy, ballsy and bracingly unsentimental.”
A list that “rewards risk”
The full longlist is rounded out by Chloe Aridjis’s The Shadow of the Object (Chatto & Windus), Makenna Goodman’s Helen of Nowhere (Fitzcarraldo Editions), Luke Kennard’s Black Bag (John Murray), and Missouri Williams’s The Vivisectors (4th Estate).
“I would not be telling the truth if I said that I hadn’t occasionally felt daunted, as a new box of 30 or so gleaming volumes landed on my doorstep,” Beard said of the judging process. “But 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.”
“Great books have never been written to a single formula,” Beard added. “We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone. There’s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there’s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there’s the gritty and the magically mysterious.”
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Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said the judges’ “range of tastes” and “openness of mind” had produced a list that “shows how capacious an art form the novel is” and “rewards risk.”
The shortlist of six books will be announced at a public event at the Southbank Centre, London, on Tuesday, 22 September 2026. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on Monday, 9 November 2026, and will receive £50,000; each shortlisted author will receive £2,500.
The Booker Prize 2026 longlist
📌 The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis (Chatto & Windus)
📌 Switzy by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus)
📌 Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
📌 The End of Everything by M John Harrison (Serpent’s Tail)
📌 The Disappearers by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton)
📌 Black Bag by Luke Kennard (John Murray)
📌 The Renovation by Kenan Orhan (Hamish Hamilton)
📌 May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry (Granta)
📌The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley (Picador)
📌 The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Picador)
📌 John of John by Douglas Stuart (Picador)
📌 All Them Dogs by Djamel White (John Murray)
📌 The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams (4th Estate)
Aishwarya Khosla spearheads the digital strategy and execution for the Books & Literature and Puzzles & Games sections of The Indian Express. With over eight years of experience in journalism, Aishwarya specialises in literary criticism, cultural commentary, and long-form features, which explore the intersection of identity, politics, and social change.
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