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In the world of the Booker Prizes this week: an exclusive interview with Pat Barker; Naomi Alderman on The Handmaid's Tale; where to start with Ian McEwan; the best post-apocalyptic reads
Pat Barker interview: ‘Success can be more challenging than failure’
Thirty years after winning the Booker for The Ghost Road, and in an exclusive interview, Pat Barker discusses feeling like an outsider, writing about men, and the under-representation of working-class voices.
While she admits that winning the Booker didn’t do her self-confidence much good (‘It can be quite frightening’), her success meant many more readers and more opportunities to engage with them. ‘I love talking to readers, because otherwise you might as well be sending postcards to Mars. It’s a peculiarly isolating profession, writing.’
Naomi Alderman on the unshakeable relevance of The Handmaid’s Tale
In a personal essay, the award-winning author of The Power reflects on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale – our Monthly Spotlight book for April – a novel that, four decades on, offers far more than a series of important warnings.
Alderman writes: ‘The Handmaid’s Tale is that extraordinary thing: a piece of literature which is perfectly observed but also gripping, which takes its time but is continually moving on. It’s literature with all the gifts: deeply-realised characterisation, thrilling plot, utterly convincing world-building, sentence-by-sentence majesty. It’s a master writer at the height of her powers throwing down the gauntlet. Did you think you had to pick between these things? You don’t. The best books do all of them.’
Where to start with Ian McEwan: a guide to his best books
Ian McEwan is a star of the Booker Prize. He won in 1998 with Amsterdam (you can read how he wrote that book here), and with six longlistings and shortlistings from the 1980s to the 2000s, he’s in joint second place for number of Booker nominations.
Since his Booker win, McEwan’s novels have become more widely read than ever. The only downside to this is that many readers of his recent novels may not realise what darkly glittering gems there are among McEwan’s earlier work. As McEwan celebrates half a century as a published author – his first collection of stories, First Love, Last Rites, was published in April 1975 – here’s our list of where to start.
Six Booker-nominated post-apocalyptic books for fans of The Last of Us
Nuclear war, devastating pandemics, natural collapse and even zombie apocalypses; speculative fiction featuring the downfall of civilisation and the end of the world as we know it has long held a special place in many readers’ hearts. And now, HBO’s series The Last of Us has just returned to TV screens. So if you’re a fan of the genre, or if season two has given you a taste for something dark and disturbing, we’ve compiled a list of post-apocalyptic Booker Prize-nominated novels that will capture the darkest of imaginations and leave you asking – at the end of it all – what really matters?
The best very short books from the Booker Library
As the late, great Beryl Bainbridge once said, ‘Unless a writer is superb, I don’t think it’s enough just to go wuffling on’. Her books were usually brief and to the point – attributes they share with many other titles in the Booker Library.
Among them are three pocket-sized novels on this year’s International Booker Prize shortlist, each weighing in at less than 130 pages: Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson; Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes; and A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson.
Here, we’ve rounded up 11 more of the shortest novels from our archives for those who love reading, but who think a great book needn’t outstay its welcome.
Have you been reading the International Booker Prize 2025 shortlist? If so, let us know your thoughts in the comments.
I love Ian McEwan's books. Saw him at an event recently in Ireland. So erudite and funny too. I think his early books are superb. Recently read The Children Act and was bowled over by it.
Perfect read, as always 💎 Great panorama 💎💕📚💕💎