Booker Prize shortlist names six authors including past winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart

Past winners and veteran contenders

The Booker Prize revealed its six-novel shortlist on 22 September at London's Southbank Centre following four hours of deliberations by the judging panel. Jamaican author Marlon James and Scottish writer Douglas Stuart both secured nominations, creating the possibility of a fifth two-time winner in the prize's history. James, who won in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, was nominated for The Disappearers, a novel detailing the fallout of a homophobic attack in 1980s Kingston. Stuart, the 2020 winner for Shuggie Bain, was selected for John of John, which follows a son returning to his repressive Calvinist family on a remote Scottish island. At 81, British science fiction writer M. John Harrison is shortlisted for The End of Everything, a dystopian story set on the Kent coast involving a beach scavenger and an alien visitor. If Harrison wins, he will surpass Margaret Atwood, who won at age 79 in 2019, as the oldest recipient in the competition's 57-year history.

Debuts and campus satire

The shortlist also features American novelist and 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout for The Things We Never Say, a novel set in coastal Massachusetts about a teacher carrying a secret. British poet Luke Kennard earned his first Booker nomination for Black Bag, his third novel, which draws on a 1960s psychology experiment at Oregon State University where an actor attends classes zipped inside a bag. British author and poet Rebecca Perry was nominated for her debut novel May We Feed the King, centered on a curator researching a medieval monarch facing court intrigue. Perry, who previously won the Waterstones debut fiction prize, would be the seventh debut author to win the award. The six titles reflect a composition where men outnumber women on the shortlist for only the second time in the past decade.

Deliberations and selection process

The judging panel whittled down 163 total submissions to a 13-novel longlist in July before selecting the final six titles. Chaired by classicist and broadcaster Mary Beard, the panel included poet Raymond Antrobus, musician Jarvis Cocker, critic Rebecca Liu, and novelist Patricia Lockwood. The judges noted that the process involved extensive debates over the entries as they narrowed the list down from the semifinal stage.

Most of these books were beginning to feel like old friends after at least two readings.

Panel members described intense discussions during the selection meetings, with Lockwood recounting energetic arguments over candidate titles. Antrobus stated that the chosen novels shared distinct creative risks and direct depictions of lived experience.

These books, we truly believe, cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence.

Timeline to the November ceremony

The Booker Prize carries a cash award of 50,000 pounds, equivalent to roughly $67,000, for the winning author. Eligible books must be works of long-form fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland between October 2025 and September 2026. The seven longlisted novels that did not make the shortlist were eliminated during the four-hour final meeting on Tuesday. The judging panel will announce the overall winner on 9 November during a ceremony in London.