The Booker Prize Longlist will be announced at the end of July. It has been a wonderful year for books, but always a challenge to predict which novels will be chosen for the longlist as the Booker is known for its surprises.
To be eligible, the novel has to have been written in English and published in UK/Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025. While I am not across when novels were published in UK/Ireland, I am going to take a guess at who might appear on the longlist.
My predictions for the Booker longlist this year are:
- Michelle de Krester - Theory and Practice
- Adbulrakaz Gurnah - Theft
- Alan Hollinghust - Our Evenings
- Laila Lalami - The Dream Hotel
- Melissa Lucashenko - Edenglassie
- Roisin O'Donnell - Nesting
- Torrey Peters - Stag Dance
- Anthony Shapland - A Room Above a Shop
- David Szalay - Flesh
- Madeleine Thien - The Book of Records
- Tim Winton - Juice
- Nussaibah Younis - Fundamentally
I had to narrow down my list and lost Anne Tyler (Three Days in June) and Ian McEwan (What We Can Know) along the way. I know there is no way there will be three Australian authors on the list, but I am hoping that at least one of these three - de Krester, Lucashenko or Winton - make the cut. I have only read O'Donnell from my list but I am keen to read the Hollinghurst, Winton, Shapland and more.
The judging panel this year consists of author Roddy Doyle (Booker winner in 1993), longlisted authors Ayobani Adebayo and Kiley Reid, actor Sarah Jessica Parker, and literary critic Chris Power. I can't wait to see what they came up with and how well I guessed.
The longlist will be announced on 29 July, followed by the shortlist on 23 September and the winner announcement in 10 November.