July 30, 2024, 11:26am
Here it is: the 2024 Booker Prize longlist, heavy on previously nominated authors and featuring new voices, including the first Native American and Dutch authors.
Edmund de Waal, the head of the judging committee, described the list of 13 novels as “a cohort of global voices, strong voices and new voices,” and added that “these are not books ‘about issues’: they are works of fiction that inhabit ideas by making us care deeply about people and their predicaments, their singularity in a world that can be indifferent or hostile.”
Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars
Colin Barrett, Wild Houses
Anne Michaels,Held
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake
Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History
Richard Powers, Playground
Sarah Perry, Enlightenment
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Percival Everett, James
Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep
Hisham Matar, My Friends
Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional
Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
The longlist was chosen out of a pool of 156 books written in English and published between October 2023 and September 2024. The shortlist of six will be announced on September 16th. Shortlisters are awarded £2,500 and the winner gets a hefty £50,000.
There’s lots more information on the longlist books and authors, as well as the Prize and its judges, on the Booker Prize website.