The 2024 Booker Prize shortlist has been announced, offering ‘a diversity of perspective, style and subject matter’.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The shortlisted books were selected by the 2024 judging panel from 156 works published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024, and submitted to the prize by publishers.
Chaired of judges Edmund de Waal said:
‘Here is storytelling in which people confront the world in all its instability and complexity. The fault lines of our times are here. Borders and time zones and generations are crossed and explored, conflicts of identity, race and sexuality are brought into renewed focus through memorable voices. The people who come alive here are damaged in ways that we come to know and respect, and we come to care passionately about their histories and relationships.’
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, added:
‘Inevitably, the judges found it very hard to relinquish seven of those books, but the rules are the rules … The six books on the shortlist bring a diversity of perspective, style and subject matter, from those that hold the reader close to those that take the reader for a spin. It’s a pleasure to bring new authors to the Booker Library and welcome back those who have been here before, and I can’t wait for even more readers to immerse themselves in the worlds created by all of this year’s cohort.’
2024 Booker Prize shortlist
- James by Percival Everett
- Orbital by Samantha Harvey
- Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
- Held by Anne Michaels
- The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
- Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
This year’s final six features five women—the most women ever to appear on the shortlist—one debut writer (Yael van der Wouden) and five countries, including the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted (Van der Wouden), the first Australian in ten years (Charlotte Wood), as well as British, Canadian and American authors. Two of the authors—Percival Everett and Rachel Kushner—have been shortlisted previously.
According to the prize:
‘The list features stories which transport readers around the world and beyond Earth’s atmosphere: from the battlefields of the First World War to a spiritual retreat in rural Australia; from America’s Deep South in the nineteenth century to a remote Dutch house in the nineteen-sixties; from the International Space Station to a cave network beneath the French countryside. Among other things, the shortlisted books explore the gravitational pull of home and family; the contested nature of truth and history; and the extent to which we reveal our real selves to others.’
The Booker Prize will be announced on Tuesday, 12 November in London, United Kingdom. The winner receives £50,000 (about R1,16 million) and a trophy named Iris, after former winner Iris Murdoch. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a bespoke bound edition of their book.
This year’s chair of judges, the artist and author De Waal, was joined on the panel by novelist Sara Collins; Justine Jordan, fiction editor of the Guardian; writer and professor Yiyun Li; and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.
Last year’s Booker Prize winner was Paul Lynch for his novel Prophet Song, which saw a 1500% increase in sales in the week following its win—the commercial boost being known as the ‘Booker effect’.
