Reading list
10 of the best Booker Prize-nominated books with a political slant
As several countries prepare for elections, we’ve pulled together ten politically-charged titles from the Booker Library featuring career politicians, revolutionary struggle and the endless quest for power
With so many high-profile elections happening throughout 2024 – in the United Kingdom, France, Russia, the United States, India and more besides – it’s of little surprise that stories of political change are dominating the world’s news headlines.
It may be that you’d rather hide in a darkened room and wait until the soundbites, promises and point-scoring is all over - a perfectly understandable reaction to the current oversaturation across all media platforms.
However, for those who find themselves completely caught up in the excitement of the political circus, we’d like to offer some book recommendations from our Booker Library, including novels featuring career politicians, the endless quest for power, revolutionary struggle and the impact of political change on people’s lives.
For our reading manifesto, we’ve pulled together a wide-ranging list that mixes the historical, contemporary, dystopian and satirical, with an added dash of political sex scandal. You won’t find us out canvassing your neighbourhood and we’re not looking for your votes or trying to change the world. What we’re hoping, is that you’ll find a book or two in this list that may interest you in these times of political challenge and change.
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize in 2004 with the story of an openly-gay middle-class recent Oxford graduate getting caught up in the craziness of the rich and powerful in 1980s London. Young Nick Guest moves to the capital as a lodger in the home of the Fedden family – Gerald, an ambitious Tory MP and his very wealthy wife Rachel, along with their troubled adult daughter Catherine, sister to Toby, with whom Nick has been good friends at university. Nick is completely consumed by their world of lavish parties, with members of the government (including Margaret Thatcher) making guest appearances at the Feddens’ London mansion, the family holidays at their manor house in France and the never-ending stream of relatives, friends and political connections. At the same time, his own private life becomes ever more complicated, self-destructive and tragic.
The BBC produced an excellent screen adaptation in 2006 that would sit happily now alongside the recent film, Saltburn – both feature similar characters, stories and settings but with very different endings.
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The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing
Shortlisted in 1985 and set in contemporary London, this is the story of a brewing revolution that emanates from the city’s squatter-filled houses. Educated but disillusioned ‘comrades’ are drawn to one another by way of common causes and form a group that, at first, just demonstrates against the powers-that-be, but then grows into something much more extreme. Lessing offers us the politics of small-scale revolution, with a quite obvious satirical edge, from the perspective of Alice, a directionless hippy-type in her 30s. She seems more committed to the fight against local government and the well-being of her comrades and their living conditions than she does to their bigger-picture political aims, yet she gets sucked into their gradual transition to radical extremism.
Providing an insight into what might turn an ordinary individual into a dangerous radical, this was a novel that Lessing has said was ‘about a certain kind of political person, a kind of self-styled revolutionary that can only be produced by affluent societies.’ Her inspiration to write The Good Terrorist came from the IRA bombing of the Harrods department store in London in 1983.
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In Their Wisdom by C.P. Snow
Shortlisted in 1974, In Their Wisdom can claim to be a particularly authentic political novel due to the fact it was written by an actual member of the UK’s House of Lords. We meet three elderly peers at a time when it was becoming clear that their very privileged Westminster existence would need to change somewhat. Whilst casting a satirical eye over this most unique of historical institutions, the novel also centres on the story of a court battle over a disputed will.
What may stop a modern reader in their tracks occasionally is the book’s specific political and social era, which shows its age somewhat, through the attitudes displayed and comments made. That said, many of the topics here are perfectly relevant to present-day politics, just as coming across an old clip from the BBC’s sitcom Yes Minister finds the characters embroiled in a 1980s issue that also happens to be dominating current headlines. The cyclical nature of politics at its best…or worst?
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A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul
Often included in lists of the greatest novels of all time, this masterpiece by V.S. Naipaul was shortlisted by the Booker Prize in 1979. Set in an unnamed African country, the story follows Salim, a young man from a family of Indian merchant traders and his incredible journey through the worlds of business and politics at a time of enormous change in that continent. In rich, haunting prose, Naipaul deals with post-colonial independence, the exploitation of commercial development and the consequential haves and have-nots that are created in a society rife with corruption.
The undeniable parallels with the present day are unnerving and positions A Bend in the River as a reflection not just of the past but a vision of where we are now, with seemingly endless conflict and persecution happening around the world.
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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
When a State of Internal Emergency is declared, four tailors who have had to leave their village for the city must try to re-build their lives. Set in India in the 1970s, Rohinton Mistry’s second novel is a story of human agony, showing how lives can go from good to bad in the blink of an eye and spiral out of control; how the political corruption and sometimes violent social change in a country can have devastating effects on its people at the time and cause repercussions decades later.
The characters in the book are not without hope but it often seems that hope, along with friendship, is really all they have left. Not for the faint-hearted, this is masterful storytelling from Rohinton Mistry and considered to be an insightful window into a highly volatile era. A Fine Balance was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996.
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A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated (from Albanian) by John Hodgson
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, Ismail Kadare’s most recent novel – if indeed it is a novel – centres around a phone call that is believed to have been made in 1934 by Joseph Stalin, one of history’s most brutal, power-hungry political dictators, to Boris Pasternak, the Soviet Union’s most respected writer of that time. The conversation only lasted for a few minutes and concerned the recent arrest of Pasternak’s fellow Soviet writer, Osip Mandelstram, who was a critic of the Soviet regime.
Through 13 versions of events, Kadare imagines the conversation and its consequences, and explores the opposing positions of the political and the artistic, a dilemma not unfamiliar to modern-day writers – Kadare included.
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Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated (from German) by Michael Hofmann
It’s 1986, the German Democratic Republic is cracking at the edges and two strangers are drawn into one another’s orbit on an East Berlin bus. Katharina is a young student and Hans a much older married man, yet due to shared artistic passions, they’re instantly attracted to each other. What follows is an exciting affair (at first), with one moment of infidelity on Katharina’s part causing a major change in Hans’s attitude and behaviour towards her. As their personal relationship takes a dark and dangerous turn, its gradual destruction plays out against a backdrop of German political revolution and the gradual collapse of the old regime.
Kairos was the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024, making Jenny Erpenbeck the first German writer to win the prize and also making the book’s translator to English, Michael Hofmann, the first male translator to receive the award.
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Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
African storytelling has a long tradition of using animals as anthropomorphised characters, and so it doesn’t feel too strange to find a group of creatures at the heart of this insightful and humorous look at the power struggle involved in a major coup – which is based on events in Zimbabwe in 2017. In the fictional country of Jidada, the 40 year-long rule of the Old Horse (who, you’ll notice, has more than just a touch of the Robert Mugabe about him) is finally challenged and the animals start believing that there’s a chance of a positive change in their lives. However, the shenanigans deployed in the power struggle are all too familiar. Will their new leader be any better, or is he just another horse? Visualising characters like the Gucci-clad donkey and the tweeting baboon brings a welcome lightness to what is a very real and painful story for many people.
Brilliantly deploying the animal kingdom to reflect on the often ridiculous tactics employed in political power struggles, and the toxic human impulses behind them, Glory was shortlisted for the Prize in 2022.
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The 2009 winner, and one of the best-loved books in the Booker Prize’s history, Wolf Hall is fictionalised politics at its very best. The premise and characters are familiar to anyone who has been through the UK’s school system, as we find dear old Henry VIII needing to get his current wife out of the picture so he can marry Anne Boleyn. Yet, by focusing on the lesser-known Thomas Cromwell, the original political spin doctor, Mantel allowed readers to imagine the Tudor period in a whole new light and experience the horrors and strangeness of Henry’s reign with a wholly fresh perspective.
Mantel’s gripping sequel, Bring Up The Bodies, was another winner of the Booker Prize in 2012 and the final part of the historical trilogy, The Mirror & the Light was longlisted in 2020.
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Anthills of the Savannah by Chiuna Achebe
In a politically corrupt West Africa, a Sandhurst-trained officer, referred to only as ‘His Excellency’, has taken power following a military coup. The story progresses through the point of view of three friends - one is the government’s Commissioner for Information, another is an official in the Ministry of Finance and the other is the editor of a newspaper, critical of the regime. Trying to keep their friendship alive when every day presents a new level of deceit, corruption or violence is a challenge, and ultimately doomed.
Shortlisted in 1987, the book is satirical, gripping and as much about fragile human relationships as it is the corruption of power.
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Further reading, on the theme of political upheaval
The Colour of Blood by Brian Moore
The Last Hundred Days by Partick McGuinness
Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou, translated (from French) by Helen Stephenson
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thein
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ
Booker Prize 2023 winner Paul Lynch with the trophy, Iris
© David Parry/Booker Prize FoundationFeatures
