Cinema VinesLondon – In a move that could see two of the Booker Prize’s most celebrated writers added to the list of repeat winners, Marlon James and Douglas Stuart were named to the shortlist on Tuesday. The two authors would become only the fifth writers ever to win the prestigious award twice, joining J.M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood.
Judges trimmed the 13 semifinalists announced in July to six on Tuesday, describing the selected titles as “moving, pacey, funny, violent, intriguing, horrifying and hopeful.” The books were chosen from an original pool of 163 submissions. The Booker Prize, which honors the best long‑form fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland between October 2025 and September 2026, offers a £50,000 prize to its winner.
James’ entry, The Disappearers, follows a group of gay men navigating a hostile Jamaican environment in the 1980s, while Stuart’s John of John tells the story of father‑son secrets on a remote Scottish island. James first won the Booker in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Stuart took the award in 2020 for Shuggie Bain.
Other shortlisted titles include Pulitzer laureate Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, a heartfelt small‑town narrative that once celebrated New England life. Strout’s previous finalist work, Oh William!, appeared on the 2022 list, and she won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2009 with Olive Kitteridge. British author Rebecca Perry’s medieval‑to‑modern tale May We Feed the King and 81‑year‑old M. John Harrison’s post‑apocalyptic novel The End of Everything also made the cut, the latter of which would make Harrison the oldest winner if it wins. Luke Kennard’s quirky campus novel Black Bag completes the lineup.
Historian Mary Beard, who heads the judging panel, reflected on the difficulty of narrowing the field, noting that many books felt like “old friends” after multiple readings. She described the panel’s deliberations as “neatly propped up against one another, almost glowing.” The panel also included Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and American novelist Patricia Lockwood. It is only the second time in the past decade that men have outnumbered women on the shortlist.
Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is known for transforming writers’ careers and is open to novels from any country published in the UK and Ireland. Last year’s winner was Flesh by Hungarian‑British author David Szalay.
