'Vibrant and electric’ shortlist for the Booker Prize 2023 is announced

The list features six books by authors never previously shortlisted, including two debuts

The shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize – the world’s most influential prize for a single work of fiction – has been announced.   

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 titles that make up this year’s shortlist are as follows (click the links to read more about them):

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

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.

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. 

The judges are looking for the best work of long-form fiction, written in English, selected from entries published in the UK and Ireland between October 1, 2022 and September 30, 2023.

Esi Edugyan 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. From Bernstein and Harding’s outsiders attempting to establish lives in societies that reject them, to the often-funny struggles of Escoffery and Murray’s adolescents as they carve out identities for themselves beyond their parents’ mistakes, to 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.’

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said:

‘This is truly a list without borders. It includes a Briton of Indian descent, an American of Jamaican descent, a Canadian recently named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, and two Irish authors.

‘Though new to the Booker shortlist, all of these writers have been lauded elsewhere or in other ways. One has been longlisted for the Booker with a previous novel. One has won the Pulitzer. A third has just been longlisted for Canada’s Giller Prize. Another has been nominated, in translation, for the two most prestigious French prizes. The two debut authors have both won the Plimpton Prize, awarded by the Paris Review.

‘It’s a pleasure to be bringing their extraordinary talents and vastly varied styles to Booker Prize readers – and we can’t wait to hear what the thousands of members of the new Booker Prize Book Club on Facebook have to say about them.’

The winning book will be announced on November 26, 2023.

Visit the Booker Prize website at the link below to read more about the 2023 shortlist. And if you’d like to join the conversation, sign up to the new Booker Prize Book Club, where you can access Booker exclusives and win a range of prizes, including tickets to our prize ceremony in London.

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What do you think of the shortlist? Which books have you read, and which are still on your TBR pile? Let us know in the comments