The Booker Prize 2026 has narrowed its field to six novels, with previous winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart returning to the shortlist alongside Elizabeth Strout, who makes her second appearance as a finalist.
The six books were selected from 163 eligible submissions by a judging panel chaired by classicist and writer Mary Beard, with Raymond Antrobus, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu and Patricia Lockwood. The shortlist spans dystopian fiction, historical fiction, campus satire and contemporary realism, with authors from England, Scotland, Jamaica and the US.
Here are the six shortlisted novels:
The End of Everything — M. John Harrison
M. John Harrison takes a post-apocalyptic Britain and gives it an unusually strange, slippery shape. Phillip Tennant survives by collecting objects washed up along the Kent coast, until he encounters something that does not fit into his understanding of the world. Harrison, an established science-fiction writer, mixes dystopian fiction with satire and mystery. At 81, he could become the oldest Booker winner if he takes the prize.
The Disappearers — Marlon James
James returns to Jamaica, the setting of his 2015 Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. Set in Kingston in 1988, the novel follows eight gay men rehearsing a play before a violent attack changes their lives. What begins around the theatre develops into a wider examination of violence, memory and the consequences that follow.
Black Bag — Luke Kennard
Kennard turns a real 1960s psychology experiment into an offbeat campus novel. Its protagonist agrees to spend a university term inside a large black bag while researchers observe how his classmates respond. The premise becomes a story about anonymity, identity, attraction and human behaviour, filtered through Kennard’s background as a poet.
May We Feed the King — Rebecca Perry
Perry’s debut novel moves between an unnamed medieval court and the present day, where a curator works on displays inside a historic palace. The two timelines meet around questions of how history gets recorded, interpreted and presented. Perry, previously known for her poetry, won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for the novel.
The Things We Never Say — Elizabeth Strout
Strout’s latest novel centres on Artie Dam, a Massachusetts teacher whose outwardly comfortable life conceals a growing sense of isolation and despair. The novel also engages with the political divisions surrounding the 2024 US election without making political conflict its sole subject. Strout was previously shortlisted for Oh William! in 2022.
John of John — Douglas Stuart
Stuart, who won the Booker in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, returns with a novel set on Scotland’s Isle of Harris in the 1990s. Young art graduate John-Calum MacLeod reluctantly returns home, where family history, religion and long-held secrets shape his attempt to reconnect with the life he left behind.
Each shortlisted author receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The Booker Prize winner will be announced on November 9 at Old Billingsgate in London and will receive £50,000 as the grand prize.
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