2024 Booker Prize longlist

 

The 2024 longlist for the Booker Prize – the world’s most influential prize for a single work of fiction – is announced today, Tuesday, July 30, 2024. 

The longlist of 13 books – the ‘Booker Dozen’ – has been chosen by the 2024 judging panel. The panel is chaired by artist and author Edmund de Waal, who is joined by award-winning novelist Sara Collins; Fiction Editor of the Guardian, Justine Jordan; world-renowned writer and professor Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.  

It features blackly comic page-turners, multigenerational epics, meditations on the pain of exile – plus a crime caper, a spy thriller, an unflinching account of girls’ boxing and a reimagining of a 19th-century classic.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty."The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

The riotous, raucous and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times) Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.

Held by Anne Michaels

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and reignite as the century unfolds.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (publishing September 3rd)

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review), comes a new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.

This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state―separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story

Playground by Richard Powers (publishing September 24th)

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

From the author of The Essex Serpent, a dazzling novel of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours.

James by Percival Everett

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.

My Friends by Hisham Matar

A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Booker Prize–nominated and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (not available in the U.S. yet)

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn’t believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living a strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past…

Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkelanimates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.

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The judges selection was made from 156 books published between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024. The Booker Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on Monday, September 16th and the winner will be announced on Tuesday, November 12th.

The judges’ selection includes: 

-Strong new voices – including three debut novels – alongside international bestselling authors and six writers previously nominated for the prize

-The first Dutch and first Native American authors to be longlisted, the first Australian in eight years, one British-Libyan writer, and authors from Canada, the UK, Ireland and the US 

-A strong showing of Americans displays a range of experience, from a first-time novelist to the author of more than 20 novels

-Blackly comic page-turners, multigenerational epics, meditations on the pain of exile – plus a crime caper, a spy thriller, an unflinching account of girls’ boxing and a reimagining of a 19th-century classic

-Eight women and five men 

-The first nomination for Pan Macmillan imprint Mantle, and four nominations for Jonathan Cape, in the imprint’s first longlisting since 2019

-‘Works of fiction that inhabit ideas by making us care deeply about people and their predicaments,’ according to Chair of judges Edmund de Waal, who adds that these are works that have ‘made a space in our hearts and that we want to see find a place in the reading lives of many others’