My Booker Prize predictions list is an annual tradition, although based on my track record for predictions in recent years, I have probably scuppered the chances of my choices below. Any novel originally written in English and published in the UK between 1st October 2025 and 30th September 2026 will be eligible, but it is impossible to know for sure which novels have been submitted for consideration by their publishers.
A significant chunk of the longlist could potentially consist of previous winners of the Prize, whose latest efforts are usually considered automatically. Departure(s) by Julian Barnes is said to be the final novel by the author of the 2011 winner The Sense of an Ending and deals with similar themes of love, ageing and unreliable narrators. John of John by Douglas Stuart could follow the success of Shuggie Bain in 2020 and is set on the Isle of Harris. Vigil by George Saunders sounds as odd as the 2016 winner Lincoln in the Bardo and is about a dying Texas oil billionaire. Son of Nobody by Yann Martel is a retelling of the Trojan War and seems to be very different from the hugely successful Life of Pi which won the Prize back in 2002. It will be interesting to see if Son of Nobody impresses the classicist Mary Beard who chairs this year’s judging panel.
There are also several authors with eligible novels published this year who have been previously shortlisted and longlisted. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout is a standalone novel separate from the worlds of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton about a history teacher whose life is unravelling. I enjoyed Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet but the panel might consider the 19th century Scottish whydunnit concept to be too similar to his 2016 shortlisted book His Bloody Project. Long Wave by Daisy Johnson is about three generations of women and how motherhood has shaped them and follows her 2018-shortlisted novel Everything Under. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead is the concluding part of his Harlem Trilogy which began with The Underground Railroad longlisted in 2017.
If the panel decide to give someone else a look in, they might go for Land by Maggie O’Farrell which is set in Ireland in the 1860s in the aftermath of the famine during the Ordnance Survey project to map the whole country. Hamnet was a surprise omission from the 2020 longlist, but hopefully O’Farrell’s well-received 10th novel will finally see her work recognised by the Booker Prize. Delirious by Damien Wilkins is set in New Zealand and is about a couple who move into a retirement village 40 years after their son died in a freak accident. Whistler by Ann Patchett is about a woman and her stepfather who are unexpectedly reunited after several decades apart.
Among debut novels, Gloria Don’t Speak by Lucy Apps is about a non-verbal young woman with learning disabilities and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction earlier this year. May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry recently won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and is about a modern-day curator and a reluctant medieval king.
The Booker dozen longlist will be announced on Tuesday 28th July. Which books would you like to see on the longlist this year?
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