The Booker Prize 2024 shortlist
The shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced! The shortlist includes five women authors, the largest number in the Booker's 55-year history. The shortlist also includes the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted, and Charlotte Wood, the first Australian to be shortlisted in 10 years.
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 was selected from 156 books published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024. Read more about the Booker Prize and the shortlisted titles here.
James by Percival Everett
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson's Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.
Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, toward the elusive promise of free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
Sadie Smith – a thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of a mysterious elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation tout court.
Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno's idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
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. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast as the snow falls.
1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures – ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.
So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds.
Available from 26 September
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
It's fifteen years since the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the conflict is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be – led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep – as a guest, there to stay for the season.
Eva is Isabel's antithesis – she sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house – a spoon, a knife, a bowl – Isabel's suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate desire for order transforms into infatuation, leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro.
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 left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand – then disappeared, presumed murdered.
Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.
With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?
