The shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prize has been announced.
The shortlist features six books by authors never previously shortlisted, including two debuts.
The six books shortlisted for the £50,000 (A$95,756) Booker Prize are:
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – READ OUR REVIEW
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
ABOUT THE BOOKER PRIZE
Novelist Esi Edugyan, twice-shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is the chair of the 2023 judging panel and is joined by actor, writer and director Adjoa Andoh; poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan; Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Shakespeare specialist James Shapiro; and actor and writer Robert Webb.
Books are selected from titles published in the UK and Ireland between 1October 2022 and 30 September 2023.
None of the six authors has previously been shortlisted for the prize. There are two debuts on the shortlist; there is one British, one Canadian, two Irish and two American authors.
Although full of hope, humour and humanity, the books address many of 2023’s most pressing concerns. Climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms. They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future.
The winner will be announced on 26 November. For more information on this year’s shortlist, see the Booker website.
Esi Edugyan, chair of the Booker Prize 2023 judges, said:
‘The best novels invoke a sense of timelessness even while saying something about how we live now. Our six finalists are marvels of form.
Some look unflinchingly at the ways in which trauma can be absorbed and passed down through the generations, as much an inheritance as a well-worn object or an unwanted talent. Some turn a gleeful, dissecting eye on everyday encounters.
Some paint visceral portraits of societies pushed to the edge of tolerance. All are fuelled by a kind of relentless truth-telling, even when that honesty forces us to confront dark acts. And yet however long we may pause in the shadows, humour, decency, and grace are never far from hand.
‘Together these works showcase the breadth of what world literature can do, while gesturing at the unease of our moment. Bernstein and Harding’s outsiders attempting to establish lives in societies that reject them. The often-funny struggles of Escoffery and Murray’s adolescents as they carve out identities for themselves beyond their parents’ mistakes. Maroo and Lynch’s elegant evocations of family grief. Each speaks distinctly about our shared journeys while refusing to be defined as any one thing.
These are supple stories with many strands, many moods, in whose complications we come to recognise ourselves. They are vibrant, nervy, electric. In these novelists’ hands, form is pushed hard to see what it yields, and it is always something astonishing. Language – indeed, life itself – is thrust to its outer limits.’
