International Booker Prize 2026 Chair of judges Natasha Brown reflects on her love of books that are surprising and daring, and the endless creative possibilities of fiction in translation
Natasha Brown
International Booker Prize 2026 judge (Chair)
- Prizes judged
Natasha Brown is an English novelist, whose debut novel Assembly won a Betty Trask award in 2022
Assembly, published in 2021, was also shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, the Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for political fiction, and has been translated into 17 languages. Her second novel, Universality, is an Orwell Prize finalist and was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
Before writing her novels, she read Mathematics at Cambridge University and spent over a decade working in the financial services industry. She was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023 and one of the Observer’s Best Debut Novelists in 2021. She has been described as ‘one of the most intelligent voices writing today’ by the Guardian and as ‘a powerful new voice in British literature’ by the Sunday Times.
She is the Chair of judges for the International Booker Prize 2026, which this year is supported by Bukhman Philanthropies.
We were particularly impressed by the book’s ability to discomfit and entertain, qualities that mark Universality as a bold and memorable achievement
The Booker Prize 2025 judges on Universality
All nominated books
A twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power
Features
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The Booker Prize 2025 longlisted authors on the books they reread again and again
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Booker Prize authors on the childhood books that made them fall in love with fiction
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