The Booker Prize Shortlist 2024

The Booker Prize shortlist for 2024 has been announced, showcasing a diverse and captivating array of literary talent. This prestigious award, which celebrates excellence in fiction written in English, has once again captivated readers and critics alike with its selection of outstanding novels. From thought-provoking explorations of societal issues to heart-wrenching tales of personal journeys, the shortlisted authors have demonstrated their mastery of the written word.

For the first time in the Booker Prize’s 55-year history, the shortlist includes five women – and just one man

As we eagerly await the announcement of the winner, let's delve into the intriguing world of this year's Booker Prize contenders.

James by Percival Everett

Everett is not stranger to the Booker Prize. Pulitzer Prize-nominated Percival Everett was shortlisted for the Booker in 2022 for The Trees.

1861, the Mississippi River. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, toward the elusive promise of free states and beyond. As James and Huck begin to navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise.

With rumours of a brewing war, James must face the burden he carries: the family he is desperate to protect and the constant lie he must live, and together, the unlikely pair must face the most dangerous odyssey of them all…

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists led by the charismatic svengali Bruno Lacombe.

Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno’s idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.

A work of high art, high comedy, and irresistible pleasure, from the author of the Booker Prize-nominated The Mars Room.

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

The 2024 shortlist features just one debut novel: The Safekeep. Tel Aviv-born Yael van der Wouden is the first Dutch author to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize, although Dutch writer Lucas Rijneveld won the International Booker Prize in 2020 for The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchison. Van der Wouden, who teaches creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands, was raised trilingual; The Safekeep was written in English, although the Dutch edition, which she co-translated, was published first.

It’s 15 years since the Second World War and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the conflict is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season…

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house her suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate desire for order transforms into infatuation – leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house – are what they seem.

Held by Anne Michaels

1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory – a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast – as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river – alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.

Anne Michaels is a Canadian novelist and poet. Her books have been translated into more than 50 languages

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity?

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.

Samantha Harvey lives in the UK and is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

The past comes knocking in Charlotte Wood’s fearless exploration of forgiveness, grief and female friendship

Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Australian outback. She doesn’t believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living a strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past…

Charlotte Wood lives in Sydney. She is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. Her novel The Natural Way of Things won the 2016 Stella Prize, the Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year Awards, and was joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her next novel, The Weekend, was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.

The Booker Prize shortlist was announced on 16 September 2024. The six books were selected by the 2024 judging panel from 156 works published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024, and submitted to the prize by publishers.

The Booker Prize 2024 ceremony will take place on the evening of Tuesday, 12 November 2024 at Old Billingsgate in London.