The Shortlist was announced today for the 2023 Booker Prize. The thirteen titles on the Longlist have been whittled down to six:
- Sarah Bernstein - Study for Obedience (Canada)
- Jonathan Escoffery - If I Survive You (America)
- Paul Harding - This Other Eden (America)
- Paul Lynch - Prophet Song (Ireland)
- Chetna Maroo - Western Lane (Kenya/Britain)
- Paul Murray - The Bee Sting (Ireland)
Well, it appears you have a better chance of being shortlisted if your name is Paul!
Chair of the judging panel, Edi Edugyan, said of the shortlist:
The best novels invoke a sense of timelessness even while saying something about how we live now. Our six finalists are marvels of form. Some look unflinchingly at the ways in which trauma can be absorbed and passed down through the generations, as much an inheritance as a well-worn object or an unwanted talent. Some turn a gleeful, dissecting eye on everyday encounters. Some paint visceral portraits of societies pushed to the edge of tolerance. All are fuelled by a kind of relentless truth-telling, even when that honesty forces us to confront dark acts. And yet however long we may pause in the shadows, humour, decency, and grace are never far from hand.
‘Together these works showcase the breadth of what world literature can do, while gesturing at the unease of our moment. From Bernstein and Harding’s outsiders attempting to establish lives in societies that reject them, to the often-funny struggles of Escoffery and Murray’s adolescents as they carve out identities for themselves beyond their parents’ mistakes, to Maroo and Lynch’s elegant evocations of family grief – each speaks distinctly about our shared journeys while refusing to be defined as any one thing. These are supple stories with many strands, many moods, in whose complications we come to recognise ourselves. They are vibrant, nervy, electric. In these novelists’ hands, form is pushed hard to see what it yields, and it is always something astonishing. Language – indeed, life itself – is thrust to its outer limits.’
This is a surprising shortlist without an obvious front runner. I haven't read any of these books yet and to be honest I am not sure I will, as most of the longlist titles I was interested in did not make the cut. The only one that intrigues me is Paul Lynch's Prophet Song.
The Winner of the Booker Prize, and recipient of £50,000, will be revealed on 26 November 2023.