The longlist for this year’s Booker Prize was announced on Tuesday. The 13 books are:
The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis
Switzy by Emma Cline
Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
The Disappearers by Marlon James
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
John of John by Douglas Stuart
All Them Dogs by Djamel White
The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams
I correctly guessed three titles this year in my predictions list – much better than recent showings in 2025 and 2024 when I only guessed one each. John of John by Douglas Stuart seemed to be a shoo-in and featured on all the other predictions list I looked at, but I missed off The Disappearers by Marlon James from the previous winners eligible this year.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout seems to be another popular choice, although there was no room on the longlist for Land by Maggie O’Farrell. My third correct prediction was May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry which recently won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
The panel members appear to be preoccupied with campus novels and academia. The premise of Black Bag by Luke Kennard sounds pleasingly odd: based on a real experiment, a struggling actor accepts a role where he spends a term attending university lectures zipped inside a large black bag to see how the other students react. The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams sounds even more abstract and is set in a university town which is becoming overrun by plants while Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman is about a disgraced professor looking to buy a house. Elsewhere, Switzy by Emma Cline, author of the buzzy debut The Girls, is about a retired executive heading to Zurich to end his life.
Which books on the longlist are you looking forward to reading?
A Little Blog of Books 
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