Your weekly edit
This week: We launch a Booker Prizes Quick Read; our pick of the best bookshops around the world; plus, read an oral history of The Sellout, ten years since its win
Celebrating the release of a Booker Prizes Quick Read
It’s been a busy week here at Booker HQ, and we’re pleased as punch to have launched a Booker Prizes Quick Read, All Around the World: Stories by Booker Prize Writers, in partnership with The Reading Agency.
If you’re new to Quick Reads, let us explain: they are short, accessible books designed to get more people reading for pleasure through access to world-class storytelling. All Around the World is a collection of seven short stories by Booker Prize- and International Booker Prize-nominated authors, curated and introduced by Roddy Doyle.
‘A lot of people might feel there is nothing about their world in books,’ said Doyle. ‘The stories in All Around the World have access points, and I hope they alert readers to the fact that, actually, their life might be in here somewhere.’ The collection is available in the UK for £1 through retailers including BookKind, Waterstones, and Bookshop.org, and can also be bought online internationally now.
To celebrate the launch of All Around the World, we asked a couple of Big Issue vendors, George and André, to help spread the word (see video above). Readers of the magazine will get a free download of the digital and audio editions of All Around the World with their copy of the Big Issue this week (8-14 June).
We’re also giving you the chance to win a copy of the paperback, along with a year-long digital subscription to the Big Issue, and a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag.
To be in with a chance of winning, simply head to the Booker Prizes website and enter your details by 12:00 BST on Wednesday, 1 July 2026. This competition is open to readers anywhere in the world.
Staff picks: the Booker Prizes team’s favourite bookshops
As you can probably tell, books are never far from our minds at the Booker Prizes – and naturally, neither are bookshops. So, as Independent Bookshop Week approaches, we’ve been questioning what makes these places truly special. It got us thinking: which shops are our own favourites?
Here, to mark the occasion, the Booker Prizes team share the local stores they return to again and again – plus the shops around the world that have made a big impression – and the reasons they keep coming back for more.
An oral history of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, 10 years on
2015 in the United States: racial tensions were taking centre stage, from campuses to courtrooms. As Barack Obama’s second term was drawing to a close, the political pendulum was swinging to the right; that summer, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter protests had developed into a fully-fledged political movement. It seems, then, that Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, a biting satire about race relations in the US, arrived at the perfect moment. It was as if he had planned it that way – but had he?
Two years after the Booker opened up to authors of any nationality, Paul Beatty became the prize’s first American winner. Here, along with the book’s UK publishers and the Chair of the 2016 judging panel, the author reflects on its success.
Do you love a lunchtime rummage or a weekend wander around your local bookshop? We’d love to hear which stores have inspired your TBR piles lately. Let us – and your fellow readers – know in the comments below!
Ten years since The Sellout? Gosh. My contemporary fiction pile is now apparently historical fiction.
I put The Sellout in the village book club after it won, mostly full of old ladies who had never left Scotland. They didn’t seem to appreciate it, unfortunately.