Previous winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart shortlisted for Booker prize — SkimNews
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- The Booker Prize shortlist includes previous winners Marlon James (2015, for A Brief History of Seven Killings) and Douglas Stuart (2020, for Shuggie Bain), alongside Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Strout and M John Harrison, with the winner receiving £50,000 on 9 November.
- James is shortlisted for The Disappearers, a 640-page novel set in Aids-era Jamaica centering on an attack on queer men rehearsing John Herbert's play Fortune and Men's Eyes — the longest book on the list.
- Stuart is nominated for John of John, a novel about John-Calum Macleod's homecoming to the Outer Hebrides that one Guardian reviewer called "an ardent exploration of the half-lives of queer men condemned to love, pine and suffer in silence."
- Strout is shortlisted for The Things We Never Say, her first novel to break from her well-known recurring cast, introducing Massachusetts history teacher Artie Dam whose comfortable life is threatened by a secret and a changing US.
- Harrison, who judged the 2022 prize, is shortlisted for The End of Everything, a post-apocalyptic novel set in an unnamed Kent coastal town that Michel Faber wrote "exposes the terrifying insecurity of life right now."
- The shortlist is four men and two women (plus debut novelist Rebecca Perry for May We Feed the King), with three male-authored books exploring masculinity and male sexuality; judge Jarvis Cocker said the male-written books "weren't as good as the ones written by women," while judge Patricia Lockwood half-joked "all these books are gay."
- Judge Raymond Antrobus said the shortlisted books "took risks" and "could not be replicated by artificial intelligence," a notable framing given Antrobus sits alongside chair Mary Beard, Jarvis Cocker, Patricia Lockwood, and Rebecca Liu.
- Notable omissions include American author Emma Cline's Switzy, which had been tipped as a potential winner, and Gwendoline Riley's The Palm House; five other longlisted books also failed to make the shortlist after a three-hour judges' meeting.
Why it matters: The shortlist concentrates literary prestige on previous winners and a Pulitzer holder, yet three of four male-authored books examine queer masculinity — a pattern judges openly debated, with Cocker calling the men's books weaker than women's. The omission of widely fancied Emma Cline also signals the panel prioritized formal risk over commercial frontrunner status.
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