The 2024 Booker Prize longlist marks two firsts: a Dutch writer and a Native American author are among the nominees.
ADVERTISEMENTThe longlist for this year’s Booker Prize for Fiction was announced this week, with a number of European authors among the 13-strong class of 2024.
As well as including works by a Dutch and a Native American writer for the first time – Yael van der Wouden’s "The Safekeep" and Tommy Orange’s "Wandering Stars", respectively – the selection is notable, judges and critics say, for its variety.
“There is no single register here,” wrote Edmund de Waal, the chair of judges, in a statement accompanying the list. “We need fiction to do different things – to renew us, give solace, to take us away from ourselves and give us back to ourselves in an expanded and reconnected way. And, of course, to entertain us.”
Not to be confused with the International Booker Prize, which is focused on translation, The Booker Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
While six of the selected novelists have previously been nominated, the list includes three writers’ debut publications.
Among the authors celebrating his inaugural work making it onto the list is Irish novelist Colin Barrett, whose "Wild Houses" centres on a kidnapping in small-town Ireland.
Bar Yael van der Wouden’s "The Safekeep’" which is a story of obsessive love set in a post Nazi-era Netherlands, Barrett’s other European peers on the list hail from the UK.
Bringing a little out-of-this-world flair to the competition, Samantha Harvey’s "Orbital" follows six international astronauts as they circle Earth on a space station, while Pulitzer Prize-winning British-Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s "My Friends" explores questions of ambition, friendship and homeland via the relationship between three Libyan men living in London. The list of European novelists is rounded out by Sarah Perry, whose "Enlightenment" mixes astronomy, unrequited love and religion.
Other writers longlisted include US authors Rita Bullwinkel ("Headshot"), Percival Everett ("James"), Rachel Kushner ("Creation Lake") and Richard Powers ("Playground"), together with Canadian-American Claire Messud ("This Strange Eventful History") and Canadian novelist Anne Michaels ("Held"). They’re joined by "Stone Yard Devotional" by Australian writer Charlotte Wood.
The winner will take home a prize of £50,000 (€59,240). The shortlist is slated to be announced on 16 September at London’s Somerset House.
