--- title: How to Read the Six Novels Shortlisted for This Year's Booker Prize description: "The six 2026 Booker Prize shortlisted novels: what each is about, who it suits and where to buy it before the winner is named on 9th November." author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-01T08:38:00.419Z updated: 2026-11-01T10:03:03.731Z canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/booker-prize-2026-shortlist image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/bp2026-shorlist-group-30.webp categories: Reading Lists, Literary Fiction content_type: Guide publication: Rich Books schema_type: Article about: - type: Thing name: Booker Prize description: The Booker Prize is an annual literary award, first given in 1969, for the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. It is run by the Booker Prize Foundation. The winner receives £50,000, and each shortlisted author receives £2,500. url: https://thebookerprizes.com --- On Monday 9th November, at Old Billingsgate in London, one of six novels will win the 2026 Booker Prize and £50,000. The judges, chaired by the classicist Mary Beard and joined by the poet Raymond Antrobus, the musician Jarvis Cocker, the critic Rebecca Liu and the novelist Patricia Lockwood, chose the six from 163 novels written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between 1st October 2025 and 30th September 2026. The shortlist runs from a post-apocalyptic satire on the Kent coast to a campus comedy about a man who spends his days zipped inside a bag, with stops at a medieval court, a Massachusetts harbour town, a croft in the Outer Hebrides and Kingston in the late 1980s. Two of the books come from former winners, and one is a first novel. Below, the six are set out from shortest to longest, so you can decide how many to read before the ceremony. ## The End of Everything by M. John Harrison is the shortest book on the list and the strangest Phillip Tennent makes his living on the tideline of the Kent coast, collecting whatever the Channel washes up, in an England that was already worn down before something called the iGhetti arrived. Nobody in the novel can say what the iGhetti is, and the book never explains it. Phillip tries to understand an artefact he has found, and to make money from it, while a woman called Marnie writes poster after poster asking how anyone could misplace a continent. The judges said the novel can be read as 'a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism'. It runs to just over 200 pages. [Harrison is 81](https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/m-john-harrison-oldest-booker-contender), and a win would make him the oldest winner in the history of the prize, ahead of Margaret Atwood, who was 79 when she won in 2019. ### Book: The End of Everything By M. John Harrison In a near-future Kent, years after a crisis that nobody can agree on, the government barely functions, the sea is full of new creatures and Europe has been mislaid. Phillip Tennent makes his living on the Channel tideline, collecting whatever washes in. When he pulls from the water something that keeps changing, he has to carry it inland before it undoes everything he thinks he knows. M. John Harrison's novel is shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Serpent's Tail](https://serpentstail.com/work/the-end-of-everything/) **Give it to:** a friend who feels short-changed by novels that explain everything. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781800812949) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/The+End+of+Everything+M.+John+Harrison) ## May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry is the only debut, set between a museum and a medieval court An unnamed curator is building six historically accurate scenes for visitors to an old royal palace, among them a royal dining room. As she works, the novel moves back to the king who once lived there, a reluctant man who came to the throne after unexpected deaths, who cares more for the palace roses than for governing, and whose court begins to wonder whether someone else should rule in his place. The judges praised the way the book unsettles the idea that history has one true version. It has already won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize this year, and at 272 pages it can be read in a weekend. ### Book: May We Feed the King By Rebecca Perry An unnamed curator builds historically accurate scenes for visitors to an old royal palace, while the novel moves back to the reluctant medieval king who once lived there. Winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2026 and shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781803513867) **Give it to:** the friend who reads every museum caption and wonders who decided what it should say. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781803513867) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/May+We+Feed+the+King+Rebecca+Perry) ## The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout follows a small-town teacher who learns a decades-old secret Artie Dam is 57. He teaches history at the high school in a coastal Massachusetts town, sails on the bay and has been married to Evie for more than three decades. Their son Rob has grown up and moved on, and Artie's closest friend is Flossie MacDonald. After a party, Artie wonders aloud why people never say anything real. Then he discovers that his own life has been keeping a secret from him, and the comfortable surface of his days gives way. This is Strout's eleventh novel and a break from her Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton books, with a new setting and an entirely new cast. You should know that it deals frankly with despair, including thoughts of suicide. ### Book: The Things We Never Say By Elizabeth Strout Artie Dam, a history teacher in a coastal Massachusetts town, discovers that his own life has been keeping a decades-old secret from him. A standalone novel, shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9780241814307) **Give it to:** anyone who has left a dinner party wishing someone had said something true. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9780241814307) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/The+Things+We+Never+Say+Elizabeth+Strout) ## Black Bag by Luke Kennard is the comedy on the shortlist, about an actor paid to sit in a bag A penniless actor, out of work, takes a job with Dr Blend, a university professor who is running a psychological experiment. The job is to sit at the back of a lecture hall, zipped inside a black bag, for an entire course of lectures. Inside the bag he drifts into long daydreams about another life working in a factory in Sweden. Outside it, the novel takes aim at cryptocurrency schemes, energy drinks and online anonymity, and finds room for a love affair. The judges described an absurd experiment carrying a moving story about human frailty, passion, confusion and identity. The idea has a real precedent: in 1967 a student at Oregon State University attended a whole course inside a black bag. ### Book: Black Bag By Luke Kennard A penniless, out-of-work actor is hired by a university professor to sit at the back of a lecture hall zipped inside a black bag, as part of a psychological experiment. A campus comedy shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781399826112) **Give it to:** a friend who wants to laugh and distrusts any novel that promises to make them. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781399826112) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Black+Bag+Luke+Kennard) ## John of John by Douglas Stuart takes a father and son back to the loom on the Isle of Harris In the 1990s, Cal Macleod comes home to the Isle of Harris from art college with a textile degree, no money and a pile of debt. His father, John, is a crofter and Harris tweed weaver who once read him scripture down a public telephone line. The island is strictly Presbyterian, and Cal is living a secret life that his father must not see. His grandmother, Ella, is the one person he can talk to. This is Stuart's third novel and his first set outside Glasgow. It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2026 and chosen for Oprah's Book Club. At 400 pages it moves at the pace of island life, and its rewards come late. ### Book: John of John By Douglas Stuart In the 1990s, Cal Macleod comes home from art college to the Isle of Harris and to his father, a crofter and Harris tweed weaver, carrying a secret life of his own. Shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781035086955) **Give it to:** anyone with a parent they love and cannot talk to. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9781035086955) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/John+of+John+Douglas+Stuart) ## The Disappearers by Marlon James is the longest book on the list and the angriest In Jamaica in 1988, eight gay men begin rehearsing a play together. A murderous homophobic attack in Kingston breaks the group apart. Some of the survivors try to ignore what the attack has dragged into the open, while others set out after the men responsible, and the novel follows both the missing and the perpetrators until the story reaches its end. At more than 500 pages it is the biggest commitment on the shortlist. It is James's first novel set in Jamaica since A Brief History of Seven Killings, which won the Booker in 2015, and the judges read it as a long overdue confrontation with Jamaican homophobia. The violence is on the page. ### Book: The Disappearers By Marlon James In Jamaica in 1988, eight gay men begin rehearsing a play together until a murderous homophobic attack in Kingston breaks the group apart. Shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize. [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9780241714409) **Give it to:** a friend who wants a thriller and a history in one book and has a long weekend free. **Buy it:** [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9780241714409) | [Barnes & Noble](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/The+Disappearers+Marlon+James) ## If there is time for only one, start with the debut May We Feed the King is the best single choice before Monday. It is short, it has already won one prize this year, and it is the book on the list most likely to send you back to the first page once you finish. If you have more time, pair it with Black Bag, the funniest book here, and then decide whether the judges will reward invention or the long, serious novels from Stuart and James. Rich Books will report on the winner after the ceremony on 9th November.