The Booker Prize, initially named after sponsor company Booker, McConnell Ltd, was established in 1969 has become one of the world’s richest literary awards.
Previous winners have included Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Kingsley Amis, Peter Carey, Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, and Hilary Mantel.
Originally it was only open to novels written in English by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) authors, but in 2014 was opened up to all English-language fiction books.
This year’s longlist, the so-called ‘Booker’s Dozen, has now been announced, chosen by the 2026 judging panel, chaired by celebrated classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard, alongside award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood.
The longlist transports readers from a hospital in Mexico City to the Kent seaside in a post-apocalyptic Britain to an assisted suicide clinic in Zurich, from the barren hillsides of the Outer Hebrides to the criminal badlands of West Dublin, from Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1980s to coastal Massachusetts in the run up to the 2024 US election, from an unnamed medieval court to a prison cell that defies explanation.
The shortlist will be announced on 22 September, before the winner is announced at a ceremony on November 9.
Here are all 13 novels in the running - and what they are about.
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13. Missouri Williams: The Vivisectors
"In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe’s boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?" | Contributed