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 Prize for Fiction Longlist announced
The longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize is announced today, Tuesday 27 July 2021.
The 13 books on this year’s longlist were chosen by the 2021 judging panel: historian Maya Jasanoff (chair); writer and editor Horatia Harrod; actor Natascha McElhone; twice Booker-shortlisted novelist and professor Chigozie Obioma; and writer and former Archbishop Rowan Williams.
The list was chosen from 158 novels published in the UK or Ireland between 1 October 2020 and 30 September 2021.The Booker Prize for Fiction is open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.
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The full 2021 Booker Prize longlist
- A Passage North, written by Anuk Arudpragasam; published by Granta Books, Granta Publications
- Second Place, written by Rachel Cusk; published by Faber
- The Promise, written by Damon Galgut; published by Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH
- The Sweetness of Water, written by Nathan Harris; published by Tinder Press, Headline, Hachette Book Group
- Klara and the Sun, written by Kazuo Ishiguro; published by Faber
- An Island, written by Karen Jennings; published by Holland House Books
- A Town Called Solace, written by Mary Lawson; published by Chatto & Windus, Vintage, PRH
- No One is Talking About This, written by Patricia Lockwood; published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing
- The Fortune Men, written by Nadifa Mohamed; published by Viking, Penguin General, PRH
- Bewilderment, written by Richard Powers; published by Heinemann Hutchinson, PRH
- China Room, written by Sunjeev Sahota; published by Harvill Secker, Vintage, PRH
- Great Circle, written by Maggie Shipstead; published by Doubleday, Transworld Publishers, PRH
- Light Perpetual, written by Francis Spufford; published by Faber
2021 Booker Prize longlist books
Browse the 2021 longlist
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Can art both save and destroy us? Rachel Cusk offers a deep affirmation of the human soul, while grappling with its darkest demons.
By Rachel Cusk
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
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Conjuring a world fraught with tragedy and violence yet threaded through with hope, Nathan Harris’ debut novel is enthralling and deeply moving.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing world through the eyes of a unique narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Karen Jennings’ gripping novel asks a question: to what lengths will a person go in order to ensure that what is theirs will not be taken from them?
A Town Called Solace was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Mary Lawson explores the relationships of three people brought together by fate and the mistakes of the past in this gripping, darkly domestic tale.
By Mary Lawson
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.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Punjab, 1929: a bride marries a man she is not allowed to see. Curiosity grows, with far-reaching consequences in Sunjeev Sahota’s absorbing 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.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. Francis Spufford’s ingenious and miraculously tender novel reimagines the lives of five London children killed in a rocket attack in World War Two.
Maya Jasanoff, chair of the 2021 judges, says:
‘One thing that unites these books is their power to absorb the reader in an unusual story, and to do so in an artful, distinctive voice. Many of them consider how people grapple with the past — whether personal experiences of grief or dislocation or the historical legacies of enslavement, apartheid, and civil war. Many examine intimate relationships placed under stress, and through them meditate on ideas of freedom and obligation, or on what makes us human. It’s particularly resonant during the pandemic to note that all of these books have important things to say about the nature of community, from the tiny and secluded to the unmeasurable expanse of cyberspace.’
‘Reading in lockdown fostered a powerful sense of connection with the books, and of shared enterprise among the judges. Though we didn’t always respond in the same way to an author’s choices, every book on this list sparked long discussions amongst ourselves that led in unexpected and enlightening directions. We are excited to share a list that will appeal to many tastes, and, we hope, generate many more conversations as readers dig in.’
Maya Jasanoff, chair of judges for the 2021 Booker Prize.
Gaby Wood, Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, adds:
‘In recent years Booker Prize longlists have drawn attention to various elements of novelty in the novel: experimentalism of form, work in unprecedented genres, debut authors. This year’s list is more notable for the engrossing stories within it, for the geographical range of its points of view and for its recognition of writers who have been working at an exceptionally high standard for many years. Some have already been rewarded with prizes (a Nobel here, a Pulitzer there). Two are debut novelists. Many have fallen within the Booker’s orbit before. To see them brought together, and to hear from them in these books, is to know that literature is in the most capable and creative of hands.’
Five novelists have been recognised by the prize before: Damon Galgut (shortlisted twice in 2006 for The Good Doctor and in 2010 for In a Strange Room); Kazuo Ishiguro (won in 1989 for The Remains of the Day; shortlisted in 2005 for Never Let Me Go, in 2000 for When we were Orphans and in 1986 for An Artist of the Floating World); Mary Lawson (longlisted in 2006 for The Other Side of the Bridge); Richard Powers (shortlisted in 2018 for The Overstory and longlisted in 2014 for Orfeo); and Sunjeev Sahota (shortlisted in 2015 for The Year of the Runaways).
Six of the longlisted books come from independent publishers: Bloomsbury, Granta, Faber, and Holland House Books. Faber has won the prize seven times before — the second highest number of wins for any publisher, just behind PRH imprint Jonathan Cape which has won eight times.
The shortlist and winner announcements
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday 14 September. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.
The 2021 winner will be announced on Wednesday 3 November in an award ceremony held in partnership with the BBC at Broadcasting House’s Radio Theatre. It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, BBC iPlayer, BBC Arts, and BBC News Channel. The winner of the 2021 Booker Prize receives £50,000 and can expect international recognition.
The 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction was won by Douglas Stuart for his debut novel Shuggie Bain. In the first full week after the announcement, the book sold more than 25,000 copies in the UK, a 1900% increase on the week preceding the announcement. Shuggie Bain has been to Number 1 in The Times and the LA Times bestseller lists, Number 2 in The Sunday Times bestseller list, and Number 3 in The New York Times bestseller list. It was chosen as the ‘Book of the Year’ by The Times and the Daily Telegraph and won both ‘Debut of the Year’ and ‘Book of the Year’ at the 2021 British Book Awards. It is now published or forthcoming in 40 territories and has already sold over three-quarters of a million copies in its Picador editions. TV and film rights have been sold to Scott Rudin/A24 for a planned TV series.
The leading prize for quality fiction in English
First awarded in 1969, The Booker Prize is recognised as the leading prize for literary fiction written in English. The list of former winners features many of the literary giants of the last five decades: from Iris Murdoch to Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul to Hilary Mantel.
The rules of the prize were changed at the end of 2013 to embrace the English language ‘in all its vigour, its vitality, its versatility and its glory’, opening it up to writers beyond the UK and Commonwealth, providing they were writing novels in English and published in the UK.
The Booker Prize is supported by Crankstart, a charitable foundation.