Two former winners of the Booker Prize have made the cut for this year’s longlist, with Marlon James and Douglas Stuart vying to become only the fifth author to win the £50,000 award twice. They join Elizabeth Strout, a three-time nominee, on a 13-strong list that judges called “dynamite” and that “rewards risk”.
The longlist – known as the Booker Dozen – was announced on Tuesday by a panel chaired by the classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard, who said each of the novels “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”. Beard joked that she “occasionally felt daunted as a new box of 30 or so gleaming volumes landed on my doorstep”, but added that she would remember “the eye-opening pleasure of it all”.
“Marlon James and Douglas Stuart longlisted for Booker Prize, aiming to become fifth two-time winner.”
James, who won the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, is longlisted for The Disappearers, a 600-page novel about eight gay men in 1980s Jamaica targeted by a homophobic mob. The judges called it “a reckoning” from “a singular literary talent”. Stuart, who won in 2020 with his debut Shuggie Bain, returns with his third novel, John of John, set on a remote Scottish island and praised for its “rich, textural detail”.
Strout, a Pulitzer Prize winner, picks up her third Booker nomination for The Things We Never Say, an 11th novel set in Massachusetts before the 2024 US election, grappling with post-pandemic social anxiety and concern about Trump’s America. She was previously shortlisted for Oh William! in 2022.
The list also features three debut novelists – Kenan Orhan, Rebecca Perry and Djamel White – and authors of seven nationalities across three continents, with nearly half from the UK. Ten of the 13 writers are appearing on a Booker longlist for the first time. The books range in setting from Mexico City and Zurich to the Isle of Harris and 1980s Jamaica.
Among those who missed the longlist are high-profile authors Maggie O’Farrell, Ann Patchett, John Lanchester, Deborah Levy and Julian Barnes, who many predicted would be recognised for his final book Departure(s).
The judges – also including musician Jarvis Cocker, poet Raymond Antrobus, journalist Rebecca Loi, and Booker-shortlisted novelist Patricia Lockwood – read 163 submitted novels before settling on the final 13. The shortlist of six books will be announced on 22 September, and the winner on 9 November.