A Passage North was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Anuk Arudpragasam's masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of the devastation of Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war.
The 2021 Booker shortlisted authors, live and in person
Each year, the Booker Prize brings together the six authors whose books have been shortlisted in that year.
After a break on in person events necessitated by the pandemic, the 2021 Booker Prize authors gathered in Coventry and London for evenings of discussion, readings and meeting readers.
See pictures, reactions and more from the events below.
Damon Galgut and Patricia Lockwood on stage at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Nadifa Mohamed answers a question at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Alex Clark talks to Nadifa Mohamed and Richard Powers at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Maggie Shipstead talks on stage at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Anuk Arudpragasam signs his book for a reader at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Richard Powers talks to a reader at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Patricia Lockwood (second from left) speaks to the audience at Southbank Centre as (from left) Damon Galgut, Alex Clark and Nadifa Mohamed look on.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize Foundation
Interviewer Alex Clark on stage at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationThe book is really a study of different kinds of yearning – it’s a novel about living with absence
Anuk Arudpragasam reads from A Passage North at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationReaders imaginations have to fill in the gaps on the map
Damon Galgut readies himself to read from The Promise at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationIf i could eat the internet in some way and then burst, I would do that for everyone in this room
Patricia Lockwood at the podium at Southbank Centre for her reading from No One Is Talking About This.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationI fell in love with Tiger Bay, it felt like a historic version of Britain that I could see myself in
Nadifa Mohamed answers a question on stage at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationI drew a lot of inspiration from the world’s most famous child, who once declared her autism her superpower
Richard Powers reads from Bewilderment at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationHer circular flight is an attempt to seek a kind of horizon
Maggie Shipstead reads from Great Circle at Southbank Centre.
© David Sandison/Booker Prize FoundationWatch the shortlist films
Explore the shortlisted books
The Promise won the Booker Prize in 2021. Brutal emotional truths hit home in Damon Galgut’s deft, powerful story of a diminished family and a troubled land.
By Damon Galgut
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Nadifa Mohamed’s gripping novel about a petty criminal in Cardiff who becomes the last man to be hanged there, wrongfully convicted of murder in 1952.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. An astrobiologist thinks of a creative way to help his rare and troubled son in Richard Powers’ deeply moving and brilliantly original novel.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. The lives of a fearless female aviator and the actress who portrays her on screen decades later intersect in Maggie Shipstead’s vivid, soaring novel.
