Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead a Brit-heavy Booker prize longlist

Range of tastes and openness of mind ... this year’s Booker prize longlist. Photograph: Booker Prize Foundation View image in fullscreen Range of tastes and openness of mind ... this year’s Booker prize longlist. Photograph: Booker Prize Foundation Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead a Brit-heavy Booker prize longlist Chair of judges Mary Beard said each of the 13 books in contention for the £50,000 award ‘takes the reader to new places’ Comment: This Booker longlist may have two previous winners, but it’s keen to experiment Douglas Stuart and Marlon James, two previous winners of the Booker, have been named on this year’s longlist, alongside three-time nominee Elizabeth Strout, in a collection that “rewards risk”. The 13 novels selected for the 2026 prize, announced on Tuesday, feature authors of seven nationalities across three continents, with almost half from the UK. Ten of the writers are appearing on a Booker longlist for the first time, including three debut novelists: Kenan Orhan, Rebecca Perry and Djamel White. Chairing this year’s judging panel is the classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard, who is joined on the panel by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. Beard said that each book on the longlist “brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds. “I would not be telling the truth if I said that I hadn’t occasionally felt daunted, as a new box of 30 or so gleaming volumes landed on my doorstep,” she added. Quick Guide The Booker prize 2026 longlist Show The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis (Chatto & Windus) Switzy by Emma Cline (Chatto & Windus) Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman (Fitzcarraldo Editions) The End of Everything by M John Harrison (Serpent's Tail) The Disappearers by Marlon James (Hamish Hamilton) Black Bag by Luke Kennard (John Murray) The Renovation by Kenan Orhan (Hamish Hamilton) May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry (Granta) The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley (Picador) The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Viking) John of John by Douglas Stuart (Picador) All Them Dogs by Djamel White (John Murray) The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams (4th Estate) James is longlisted for his fifth novel, The Disappearers, based around a homophobic mob attack in 1980s Jamaica, to be published in September. The judges called it “a reckoning” from “a singular literary talent”. James won the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings. Stuart, who won in 2020 with his debut, Shuggie Bain, returns with his third novel, John of John, which the judges praised for its “rich, textural detail”. Should either win again, they would become only the fifth author to take the Booker twice, joining JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood. Strout, meanwhile, picks up her third Booker nomination for The Things We Never Say, her critically acclaimed 11th novel, which reckons with Trump’s America. Strout was longlisted in 2