“I love the fact that a book can be like a living thing,” said one of the judges for the Booker Prize 2024, as they were narrowing down the titles for this year’s shortlist from the longlist of 13 books. Artist and writer Edmund de Waal, head of the prize jury, said the list included “books that navigate what it means to belong, to be displaced and to return”, with settings ranging from World War I battlefields to America’s Deep South in the 19th century to the International Space Station.
The shortlist of six books, announced on September 16, includes the largest number of women in the Booker’s 55-year history, with five women and one man represented. The list also includes the first Dutch writer to be shortlisted and the first Australian in 10 years. The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced in London on November 12, 2024. Each of the shortlisted authors receives £2,500 and a bespoke bound edition of their book.
Read our reviews of the 2024 Booker Prize-nominated books here:
‘Held’ by Anne Michaels
It’s no spoiler to reveal that there are several ghosts in Michaels’s novel. “The past erupts insistently into the present” as John develops his clients’ photos and unexpected strangers emerge from the emulsion. In a regular ghost story, John would have to get to the bottom of the mystery. This being a literary endeavour, however, the author feels no obligation to entertain the peasants. Read more
‘Creation Lake’ by Rachel Kushner
Creation Lake isn’t your typical spy thriller like the blurbs promise, and that’s largely because Kushner is always pushing the boundaries of form. She takes us into a world of eco-terrorism, anarchist communes, and the murky ethical boundaries of surveillance. Read more
‘James’ by Percival Everett
Percival Everett sets up a brilliant back story to Jim, the slave from Mark Twain’s celebrated novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He gets into Jim’s psyche and cultural space, and makes him address readers directly. The novel begins with Jim waiting at the kitchen door of Miss Watson (Huck’s guardian), for some corn bread that has been promised to him. “Waiting is a big part of a slave’s life,” he says. Read more
‘The Safekeep’ by Yael van der Wouden
Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden presents a portrait of a society grappling with the aftermath of World War II and the German occupation of the Netherlands. An unlikely romance buds in the quiet town of Overjissel but as the reader reaches the end of the story, it becomes clear that all this has been taking place in the long shadows of German occupation and concentration camps. Read more
‘Stone Yard Devotional’ by Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood sets her new work in the Monaro plains of New South Wales with the story revolving around an unnamed narrator who disappears from the city, giving up her marriage and work, to cloister herself in a monastery run by nuns. Written during the pandemic lockdowns and after a serious illness, Wood whittles down her prose to the bare essential, and tells a powerful story of love and loss, hope and despair and the changing nature of grief and forgiveness. Read more
‘This Strange Eventful History’ by Claire Messud
The eventfulness or eventless-ness of the stories in this novel may be up for deliberation but not the strangeness it employs in portraying familial relationships, signalling the author’s commitment towards storytelling. “A story is not a line; it is a richer thing, one that circles and eddies, rises and falls, repeats upon itself,” Messud says. Read more
‘My Friends’ by Hisham Matar
My Friends spans 30 years, from 1980 to the Libyan revolution of 2011, told within a two-hour-long walk across London undertaken by the protagonist, Khaled. The story begins with the end — two friends part and the reader does not know why. Read more
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
In Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel, there are no inspiring trainers. But the eight feisty girls, finalists at an under-18 boxing championship, who converge on Reno in the middle of the American heartland from all across the United States, have the reader’s heart. Read more
Published - November 04, 2024 04:41 pm IST
