Each year, the not-for-profit Booker Prize Foundation scours the U.K., Ireland and the world seeking the fiction tomes deemed the best of the year for the prestigious Booker Prize. In addition to fêting the great books of the year, the Foundation has one driving mission at heart: That literature isn’t just entertainment — it is a vital, life-changing force in the world that needs to be protected, celebrated, supported and, in the case of the shiny annual award, acknowledged.
Started in 1969 by publishers Tom Machler and Graham C. Greene, the prize was originally named for the agricultural shipping company Booker McConnell that dealt in sugar and cotton. However, their not-prize-worthy history in colonial exploitation led to a break between the literary organization and their beneficiary, although the name, now familiar, stuck.
In 2015, the BPF added the Man Booker International Prize for fiction written originally in languages other than English, expanding their reach to the globe at large. Today, authors from 72 countries have been acknowledged and awarded for their work. They also now have Children’s Booker Prize, a scholarship program, literacy partnerships, collaborations with book sellers worldwide and so much more. Reading is, as they say, fundamental.
To be on the final list of Booker Prize is no small feat. Over here at Southforker, we heartily agree. So for this month’s Feed Your Read, we’re giving you the final contenders for this year’s award, to be announced Nov. 9. All are available at your favorite East End book shops and libraries — and if they’re not on hand? Just ask! Book people are very generous, don’t you know. Head to the Booker Prize website for reading guides for each of these venerable tomes.
The Disappears by Marlon James
Born of experiences he both personally had, witnessed, heard or read about in his native Jamaica, Brooklyn resident Marlon James — who won the Booker in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings — takes readers on a journey of dual points of view in this painful tale of intolerance and its after effects. Focusing on eight gay men who are brutally attacked while rehearsing for a local play in Kingston, Jamaica, the book tells the story from the point of view of both the attacked and attackers in 1980s-era Jamaica and how the attack changes their lives in the gut-punch of a clear-eyed view into homophobia and its victims.
John of John by Douglas Stuart
Class, sexuality and social upheaval are the themes in this poignant novel by Scottish author Douglas Stuart (who won a prior Booker Prize in 2020 for the tome Shuggie Bain), which follows the uncomfortable reuniting of father and son John and Cal Macleod, who try fail and try to hold their tenuous bonds from fraying over the years.
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Using family fissure to reflect the cracks in community and the world at large, Strout’s heartbreaking novel follows the quietly unsatisfactory Massachusetts-centered life of Artie Dam and how a revealed secret threatens to upend everything he knows. It’s the favored winner from Finley’s Fiction owner Finley Shaw, who says, “I love Elizabeth Strout books and have read all of them. This one felt different. It had a political slant and takes place after the 2024 presidential election. It’s an ambitious but timely book.”
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
In Black Bag, British author and poet Luke Kennard takes us on a journey into the world of broke, out-of-work actor referred to as Black Bag, who finds work as the subject of a bizarre psychological experiment: Being zipped into a giant, life-size black bag during a professor’s lectures. (Think “Love Is Blind” meets E.L. Doctorow). Both hilarious and profound, the book takes on the themes of disconnect, love and human connection.
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
The past and present collide in this excellent tale that follows a reluctant king from the past who inherits a throne he hadn’t expected was his path in life, and a present-day museum curator who takes cover from life in her work where she lives in the past, creating scenes that bring history to life for visitors to her cultural institution via her point of view, creating a past/present collision that resonates in real time.
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
Award-winning British author M. John Harrison’s post-apocalyptic page turner follows the beachcombing curiosities of its main character Phillip Tennent, who collects and tries to make sense of the odd objects and new-world creatures who have changed the face of the waters he once knew. One particular object becomes his focus, and may be a distinct danger to what’s left of the world at large, bringing to the fore the limits and extensions of human morality, understanding and our view of what we think we know is true.
