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Indie-heavy Booker longlist has record number of Irish writers for 2023
The 2023 Booker Prize longlist features mostly indie publishers with Irish writers – including Sebastian Barry and Elaine Feeney – comprising a third of nominations for the first time.
The 13-strong longlist for the £50,000 award, dubbed the Booker Dozen, features 10 authors longlisted for the first time, including four debut novelists: Jonathan Escoffery, Siân Hughes, Chetna Maroo and Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow – the latter’s novel features a neurodiverse protagonist, written from personal experience.
Meanwhile Barry has become one of 10 writers to have been nominated for the Booker Prize at least five times while Tan Twan Eng has been nominated for each of his three novels.
Seven of the longlisted books come from independently-owned publishers with Canongate leading the way with two titles while Faber, Oneworld, Granta, Atlantic and Indigo Press are also featured.
Penguin Random House imprints Hutchinson Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton and Harvill Secker are nominated along with HarperCollins’ imprint Fourth Estate, Pan Mac’s Picador and Hachette imprint Tinder Press.
Of the debuts, British author Lloyd-Barlow’s All the Little Bird-Hearts (Tinder Press) builds on the author’s extensive personal, professional and academic experience relating to autism – like her character Sunday, Lloyd-Barlow is autistic. “Written from the perspective of an autistic mother, [it] is a poetic debut which masterfully intertwines themes of familial love, friendship, class, prejudice and trauma with psychological acuity and wit,” the judges said.
American Jonathan Escoffery is nominated for his debut If I Survive You (4th Estate), which was praised by the panel for “its clarity, variety and fizzing prose”. The book follows Jamaican husband and wife Topper and Santa who flee from the troubles of their 1970s Caribbean home to make a new life in Miami with their sons Delano and Trelawney. Judges said of the US author’s work: “In the remorseless, laugh-out-loud code switching of the recently arrived, they attempt to survive America and each other, as the reader is confronted with the immigrants’ eternal questions: who am I now and where do I belong?”
British author Siân Hughes is also nominated for her first book, Pearl (The Indigo Press), dubbed “an exceptional debut novel, is both a mystery story and a meditation on grief, abandonment and consolation, evoking the profundities of the haunting medieval poem,” by the judges. They added: “The degree of difficulty in writing a book of this sort – at once quiet and hugely ambitious – is very high.”
British author Chetna Maroo’s was longlisted for Western Lane (Picador), described by the panel as “a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language”.
Including this year’s longlistees, 37 Irish writers have been recognised by the Booker Prize, making Ireland the country that has produced the most nominees, relative to population size, in the prize’s history. The oft-nominated novelist Barry is up for Old God’s Time (Faber & Faber). It follows a murder investigation in which a retired policeman must confront the loss and sorrow of his past. Judges said: “Barry evokes the distorting effect of trauma on memory as we enter an easy companionship with his gentle, funny protagonist. Both the legacy of historic child abuse in Ireland and the enduring power of love are sensitively explored in this compassionate and quietly furious book.”
Feeney’s book, How to Build a Boat (Harvill Secker) includes interweaving stories of a teenage boy, Jamie, searching for meaning in the world, and his teacher Tess. “Feeney has written an absorbing coming-of-age story which also explores the restrictions of class and education in a small community,” the judging panel said. They described it as “a complex and genuinely moving novel".
Fellow Irish author Paul Murray is up for The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton) set in the Irish Midlands, and “explores how our secrets and self-deceptions ultimately catch up with us,” according to the panel. The members added: “This family drama, told from multiple perspectives, is at once hilarious and heartbreaking, personal and epic. It’s an addictive read.”
Another longlisted exploration of Ireland comes from Paul Lynch in the form of Prophet Song (Oneworld). Dubbed by judges as “harrowing and dystopian”, the book “vividly renders a mother’s determination to protect her family as Ireland’s liberal democracy slides inexorably and terrifyingly into totalitarianism”.
The two nods for Canongate includes longtime longlistee Tan Twan Eng for The House of Doors, inspired by Somerset Maugham. The Malaysian author was praised for by judges for the “magisterial and haunting tale of forbidden love and loss in the shadow of revolution and empire… historical fiction at its finest”.
Nigerian author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is nominated A Spell of Good Things, an examination of class and desire in modern-day Nigeria. “While Eniola’s poverty prevents him from getting the education he desperately wants, Wuraola finds that wealth is no barrier against life’s harsher realities,” the panel said. “A powerful, staggering read.”
Canadian author Sarah Bernstein is in the running for Study for Obedience (Granta Books). It is described by judges as: “An absurdist, darkly funny novel about the rise of xenophobia, as seen through the eyes of a stranger in an unnamed town – or is it? Bernstein’s urgent, limpid prose upsets all our expectations, and what transpires is a meditation on survival itself.”
Paul Harding’s This Other Eden (Hutchinson Heinemann) has also been longlisted. Based on a relatively unknown true story, the American author’s “heartbreakingly beautiful paean to Apple Island, off the coast of Maine, transports us to the unique tiny community scrabbling a living there – descended from trafficked Africans, immigrant Irish and indigenous Penobscot,” judges said. The panel praised “the delicate symphony of language, land and narrative that Harding brings to bear on the story of the islanders”.
Finally, In Ascension (Atlantic), by Brit Martin MacInnes completes the longlist. “In this strange and wonderful world, every outward journey – whether to space or the depths of the ocean – is an inward one, as Leigh seeks to move beyond her troubled childhood,” judges said. “In Ascension is a Solaris for the climate-change age.”
The longlist was selected by a panel chaired by twice-shortlisted novelist Esi Edugyan. She was joined by writer, director and “Bridgerton” actor Adjoa Andoh along with poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan, author and professor James Shapiro as well as actor and writer Robert Webb.
Edugyan said: “We read 163 novels across seven months, and in that time whole worlds opened to us. We were transported to early 20th century Maine and Penang, to the vibrant streets of Lagos and the squash courts of London, to the blackest depths of the Atlantic, and into a dystopic Ireland where the terrifying loss of rights comes as a hard warning.
“The list is defined by its freshness – by the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones. All 13 novels cast new light on what it means to exist in our time, and they do so in original and thrilling ways. Their range is vast, both in subject and form: they shocked us, made us laugh, filled us with anguish, but above all they stayed with us. This is a list to excite, challenge, delight, a list to bring wonder. The novels are small revolutions, each seeking to energise and awaken the language. Together – whether historical or contemporary – they offer startling portraits of the current.”
Gaby Wood, c.e.o. of the Booker Prize Foundation, added: “The range of experience, expertise and sensibility among this year’s judges led them to seek novels that both advanced the form and allowed the reader to understand something about the world; books that would have impact and longevity; books that moved them – and above all, books of such excellence and subtlety that the judges looked forward to re-reading them.
“It’s a pleasure to add to the Booker Library this selection of debut novels, new work from established Booker authors, and books by other writers at the peak of their practice who are new to the prize. We hope every reader finds something to love on this year’s list.”
Their selection was made from titles published between 1st October 2022 and 30th September 2023, and submitted to the prize by publishers. The Booker Prize is open to works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
This year’s prize sees a change to the previous dates and venues. The shortlist of six books will be announced on 21st September at an evening event at the newly re-opened National Portrait Gallery in London. It will be livestreamed across all the Booker Prizes’ social platforms. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
On 7th October the new Booker Prize podcast co-host James Walton will appear at the Cheltenham Literary Festival to introduce readers to the shortlisted authors and books and to present the world premiere of this year’s shortlist films.
The shortlisted authors will also take part in the annual readings at the Southbank Centre in London on 23rd November. Tickets will be on sale from the Southbank Centre’s website later this year.
The winner will be announced on 26th November at an award ceremony held at Old Billingsgate. The winner receives £50,000 and a trophy designed by the late Jan Pieńkowski. In a recent public vote, the trophy was named ‘Iris’ in honour of the 1978 Booker winner Iris Murdoch.
Ahead of the shortlist announcement, the Booker Prizes will be launching a Booker Prize Book Club, inviting readers around the world to explore the shortlist together, sharing their views and comments in a community forum and even helping to interview the shortlisted authors. Selected members of the Book Club will be invited to join the winner ceremony in November.
Last year’s Booker Prize went to Shehan Karunatilaka with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (Sort of Books).
