Past Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have been shortlisted for the prestigious literary award again, after a selection process that the judges described as "a tussle". Jamaican writer James is nominated this year for his latest novel The Disappearers; while Scottish author Stuart is shortlisted for John of John. This year's other contenders are award-winning US novelist Elizabeth Strout, and British authors M John Harrison, Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry.
But seven books that appeared on the longlist in July have been jettisoned, and Dame Mary Beard, who chaired the judging panel, said agreeing on the final six "has been, to put it mildly, hard work". Scroll down to find out more about this year's nominees. James previously won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, while Stuart won in 2020 for Shuggie Bain.
Praising this year's entries, Dame Mary added: "English language fiction now is full of talent – talent old and talent new. "It's full of wit, seriousness, pleasure, challenge, discomfort and real brilliance, and I think we should be rewarding our novelists a lot more than we do." The other judges included former Booker Prize-shortlisted US novelist Patricia Lockwood, who said she discovered she was "bossier than I believed myself to be" when making the case for or against particular books in the judges' meetings. "I was sort of standing up a lot and tossing books across the room and being really active.
I was like, 'Wow, yeah, I didn't know I had it in me'." Another judge, poet Raymond Antrobus, told reporters: "All of us individually had a different idea for a shortlist and then it was a tussle." Lockwood jokingly added: "A tussle, yeah. We wrestled like pigs in the mud!" Antrobus said the final choices are connected because they are books that "as well as having heart, also took risk". "These books, we truly believe, cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence.
These are very human books for the way they talk about and navigate a lived experience." The judging line-up was completed by journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu and Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who said being on the selection panel was "a bit like being in a band". He said: "The way a band makes an appealing noise is by everybody combining, in a way, and if you don't like that then you have to go solo. "You get something that you couldn't get [alone] and no-one's in control of it and you make a good noise together.
So I hope that's what this shortlist is, a nice noise." Cocker read some of the entries while on tour, and said he joined one judges' meeting online while wearing a dressing gown in a hotel room in Australia at 02:00 local time. "When you're on tour, it's quite dull when you're travelling so it was quite good to have something to read," he said. "I became known for being in those meetings wearing a towelling robe." The End of Everything by M John Harrison An unexplained catastrophe, and the arrival of mysterious alien beings, have turned British society upside down - and a man and his elderly aunt muddle through on the Kent coast.
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