Maine, Penang, Lagos, Luton and the deepest depths of the Atlantic Ocean. These are just some of the destinations that the 2023 Booker Prize judges have been transported to by the 163 novels they read as they selected a longlist of 13 for one of the world’s most respected literary awards.
This year’s list features 10 first-time Booker nominees and four books by Irish writers. There’s also a heavy focus on water and the natural world – perhaps unsurprisingly, in an era when the effects of the world’s climate and biodiversity crises are being felt ever more intensely.
Potential future water shortages are also a focus of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, including how they could spark humanitarian and ecological crises – from water wars and famines to a slowdown in climate mitigation and adaptation.
Here are summaries of all the books on the Booker Prize 2023 longlist. The shortlist of six books will be announced on 21 September, with the winner of the £50,000 prize announced on 26 November.
A Spell of Good Things by Ay?`bámi Adébáy?`
Wealth and power in modern-day Nigeria are at the centre of this novel by Ay?`bámi Adébáy?`. The plot centres on two very different families – one forced into begging because of unemployment, another with no worries at all when it comes to money. Adébáy?`’s debut, Stay with Me, was translated into 20 languages and named a book of the year by newspapers around the world.
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
A retired policeman is forced to confront an old case in this novel by Booker shortlist regular Sebastian Barry. Set on the Irish coast, the story is told by an unreliable, reclusive narrator who has almost no contact with other people. UK newspaper The Guardian described Old God’s Time as a “dreamlike novel about the impact of trauma on memory”.
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
A woman moves to a remote community to become a housekeeper to her brother after his wife leaves him. Suspicion about the new arrival spreads among the locals, and that’s not the only thing spreading. Crops, cattle and the protagonist’s brother are hit by strange illnesses in a novel that transports the reader to “unsettling and unknowable worlds”, according to The Financial Times.
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
It’s 1979. Three Jamaicans flee their home country for Miami because of political violence. Eight interconnected stories unfold over the next 40 years, showing the struggles of a family of immigrants in the US. Racism, a hurricane and a financial crisis are among the obstacles. Escoffery relays them all with “style, heart and barbed humour”, the Booker website says.
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
Irish writer Elaine Feeney has written more poetry collections than novels. How to Build a Boat is her second novel. It centres on a 13-year-old boy who wants to create a perpetual motion machine – one that requires no external source of energy – to try and connect with his mother, who died when he was born. Booker judges described it as “an absorbing coming-of-age story”.
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Off the coast of the US in the late 1700s, people cast out by society set up home on Apple Island. Their descendants remain there, until the civilization that threw them off the mainland decides to also evict them from the island. “So real it could make you weep,” says The New York Times.
Pearl by Siân Hughes
Siân Hughes is almost 60, but this is her debut novel. She’s written poetry collections before, and her first novel is inspired by a medieval poem also called Pearl. A young girl’s mother goes missing. She’s sure her father is keeping secrets from her. “A ghost story, a folk story, a story of loss and familial haunting,” according to one reviewer.
All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow
Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow left school at 16 with no qualifications and told UK newspaper The Times that she wrote a lot of her debut novel on her phone while waiting for appointments. The book follows an autistic mother and her daughter who is about to leave home. Lloyd-Barlow herself was diagnosed as autistic later in life, and her novel is set in the 1980s when understanding of the condition was less widespread than it is today.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The secret police knock on an Irish scientist’s door asking to speak with her husband. What follows is a dystopia about an Ireland tipping into tyranny. “Lynch is brilliant at capturing people’s disbelief and denial throughout the slow slide into totalitarianism,” The Guardian says. “An urgent, important read.”
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Here’s another Irish writer (there are four in total on this year’s Booker longlist), but this book is not set in Ireland. Instead, we’re in a newly discovered trench in the Atlantic Ocean with a marine biologist, looking for evidence of Earth’s first life forms. “What she finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings,” the Booker website says.
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Chetna Maroo was born in Kenya and lives in London. Western Lane, her first novel, is about an 11-year-old girl whose mother dies and whose father tries to turn her into a squash champion. “The game of squash becomes a way into Gopi’s grief and her attempts to process it,” The New York Times says. Booker nerds might remember another novel with a squash enthusiast in it that made it onto the prize’s longlist in 2005 – Ian McEwan’s Saturday.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Can one stroke of bad luck change a life for ever? That’s the question at the centre of the fourth novel by Paul Murray, a 650-page family saga that has led to him being billed as Ireland’s version of renowned US novelist Jonathan Franzen. The Bee Sting also packs in plenty of humour, says The Guardian, as well as someone who is building an apocalypse-proof bunker.
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
“A drama of love and betrayal under the shadow of Empire,” is how Tan Twan Eng’s third novel is billed. Set in Colonial Malaysia, it is inspired by a short story by W Somerset Maugham, and features Maugham as a character. The famous author is struggling to find inspiration to write, but at the same time is being told facts fit for the pages of fiction, about the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in Kuala Lumpur.
Source: World Economic forum