A 640-page tome about the fallout from a homophobic murder in Jamaica. A science-fiction novel that starts with an alien washed up on the shore. A comedy about a campus social experiment in which an actor wears only a black bag to class.
All three of those books are among the six shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, whose nominees were announced on Tuesday.
The highest-profile titles are Marlon James’s “The Disappearers,” the tale set in Jamaica that Dwight Garner in a recent review for The New York Times called “the novel of the decade,” and Douglas Stuart’s “John of John,” about a young gay man’s fraught return home.
The authors of both are past Booker winners, and if either of them triumphs this year, it would be only the fifth time a writer has won the prize twice.
The other nominees include Elizabeth Strout’s “The Things We Never Say,” about a depressed teacher; M. John. Harrison’s “The End of Everything,” set in a dystopian Britain and involving aliens and beach scavengers; Luke Kennard’s “Black Bag,” inspired by a 1960s experiment at Oregon State University; and Rebecca Perry’s “May We Feed the King,” an innovative historical debut.
Although the shortlist contains some of the year’s most critically acclaimed novels, Mary Beard, the chair of the judging panel, said in a telephone interview that literary reputations hadn’t influenced the judges’ choices. The six titles, chosen after four hours of deliberation, all “share the capacity to make you look at the world in a different way,” Beard said.
They also, she added, all “grab you by the neck, some with very gentle tweaks, some a bit more in your face.”
The Booker, which was first awarded in 1969, is given each year to a book written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The author of the winning title will receive 50,000 pounds, about $66,700. The judges will announce their choice on Nov. 9 during an event in London.
Here is more on the shortlisted titles.
The End of Everything
by M. John Harrison
Harrison, 81, could become the oldest-ever winner of the Booker if he triumphs for his 13th novel, the main character of which is a scavenger who finds an alien on a beach. British critics have called Harrison “the best writer you’ve never heard of” for titles that jump between genres. This year’s Booker judges hinted at that variety, saying in a news release about the shortlist that Harrison’s latest “can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism.”
The Disappearers
by Marlon James
James won the 2015 Booker Prize for the epic “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” and his sixth novel is a similarly lengthy story of the fallout from a deadly homophobic attack in Jamaica. James said in a recent interview with The Times that its unflinching depictions of sex and violence were deliberate. “I don’t go to novels to be safe,” he said: “I go to novels to be titillated, to be scared, to be educated, to be frightened — honestly, to be appalled.” Read Garner’s review.
Black Bag
by Luke Kennard
In Kennard’s book, a professor hires a failing actor to attend classes concealed inside a black bag, and those performances go in increasing absurd directions. Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times of London said that beneath the book’s playfulness “lies a thoughtful, tender meditation on the difficulty of being a man in the modern world.”
May We Feed the King
by Rebecca Perry
The only debut novel among the nominees, Perry’s title began as two short stories — one about an a woman who recreate historical scenes with food, and another about an attendant to a dying king — until she realized she could bring the two tales together in a narrative that swerves between past and present. A major British bookseller has already given it a “best debut” award.
The Things We Never Say
by Elizabeth Strout
Set around the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, Strout’s novel is about a high school history teacher who considers suicide before a sailing accident and the revelation of a long-buried family secret upend his life. Maggie Shipstead in The New York Times said that reading the book was a pleasure, even with occasionally clunky references to recent political events. Read Shipstead’s full review.
John of John
by Douglas Stuart
Stuart won the 2020 Booker Prize for his debut, “Shuggie Bain.” His third novel tells the story of Cal, a 22-year-old gay man returning home to live with his angry father on a remote Scottish island. Mark Harris, in The Times, said that Stuart was “not particularly interested in telling either a coming-home or a coming-of-age story” as readers might expect from the plot summary. Instead, Stuart “uses that architecture to building something different, stranger and far more original.” Read Harris’s review.
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