Booker longlist goes weird, led by two former winners
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- Marlon James returns to the longlist 12 years after winning with A Brief History of Seven Killings, with The Disappearers, a polyphonic epic about a 1988 mob attack on a gay theatre group in Kingston.
- Douglas Stuart, who won in 2020 with Shuggie Bain, is longlisted for John of John, about a young gay man returning to his childhood home on the Hebridean island of Harris where his devout father is also hiding his sexuality.
- Elizabeth Strout earned her third Booker nomination for The Things We Never Say, while Emma Cline made the list with Switzy, a novel about a high flier whose grip on the world is failing as dementia encroaches.
- Ben Lerner's Transcription was widely seen as a shoo-in but was notably omitted from the longlist.
- Gwendoline Riley finally received a Booker nomination after 25 years of writing, for The Palm House, a long friendship story set against the precarity of London life.
- Judge Patricia Lockwood declared the list reflects 'a new, weird literature emerging' in the face of AI and fractured attention, soaked in 'absurdism and surrealism,' and joked she wanted to choose 'the craziest book on Earth.'
- The shortlist will be released on 22 September.
Why it matters: The longlist's experimental tilt — affirmed by Lockwood's own framing — shows the Booker judges are rewarding formal risk over commercial predictability, with established names like James and Stuart sharing space with cult debuts from Missouri Williams and M John Harrison. The omission of widely-favored Ben Lerner demonstrates this year's panel is willing to break with bookmaker expectations.
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