A woman recovering from a dog bite in a Mexico City hospital strikes up a spellbinding friendship with an elderly collector of pre-cinema toys, then returns to London where the line between imagination and reality starts to blur.
Judges called it a meditation on desire, metamorphosis and mortality.
Switzy
Emma Cline
A retired American executive with dementia travels across Europe toward an assisted-death clinic in Zurich, his fading memories surfacing as an assistant shepherds him through a final, fractured pilgrimage.
Praised as a hypnotic, darkly humorous portrait of a life unravelling.
Helen of Nowhere
Makenna Goodman
A disgraced professor tours a countryside home with a realtor, who tells him about Helen, the house's enigmatic former owner — and what he might have to give up to live as simply as she did.
Judges called it philosophically and spiritually adventurous.
The End of Everything
M. John Harrison
In a post-apocalyptic Britain where the seas hold strange new creatures, a beachcomber salvages a shape-shifting object he can't keep — one that threatens to undo everything he thinks he understands.
Described by judges as shimmering, oblique, and about "now."
The Disappearers
Marlon James
Eight gay men rehearsing what's billed as Jamaica's first openly gay play are attacked by a mob in 1980s Kingston; years later, a survivor sets out to trace what became of the others.
James previously won the Booker Prize in 2015.
Black Bag
Luke Kennard
A broke actor takes a bizarre job sitting zipped inside a bag through university psychology lectures, setting off a satire on masculinity, online life and unlikely love.
Judges praised its sharply crafted sentences and humour.
The Renovation
Kenan Orhan
A Turkish exile hires builders to renovate her bathroom for her ailing father — and finds they've installed a fully functioning Turkish prison cell instead, pulling her back toward the homeland she left behind.
Judges called it a hilarious fantasy with an unsettling side.
May We Feed the King
Rebecca Perry
A museum curator who stages historic banquets becomes absorbed in the story of an almost-forgotten, reluctant medieval king facing whispers that he's unfit to rule.
Judges called it a delicate meditation on history and storytelling.
The Palm House
Gwendoline Riley
Two old friends navigate a hostile magazine takeover, a lost father and a precarious London life, in a wry, closely observed study of long friendship.
Judges praised its minimalist, precise dialogue.
John of John
Douglas Stuart
An art-school dropout returns to the Isle of Harris, caught between his devout sheep-farmer father and his Glaswegian grandmother, as an insular community's fragile peace comes undone.
Stuart previously won the Booker Prize in 2020 for Shuggie Bain.
All Them Dogs
Djamel White
Back in West Dublin's gangland after years away,
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The Indian Express·
Booker Prize 2026 longlist: Former winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart lead 13-book selection
Booker Prize 2026 longlist: Former winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart lead 13-book selection The Indian Express
The Guardian·
Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead Booker prize longlist
Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead Booker prize longlist The Guardian
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