12 Booker-nominated books that have been adapted for the stage

In an interview for Waterstones ahead of the 2023 world premiere of the English-language stage adaptation of A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara talked about how ‘thrilling’ it was to watch the actors embody the characters in her Booker-shortlisted book. She described it as ‘really magical… like alchemy’.

Yanagihara’s admiration for Ivo van Hove, the play’s director, was clear: ‘The reason I gave him the rights back in 2017 – this is when the Dutch version came out – is because I knew his work and I admired it and I knew he would have ideas… You can look back at his other plays and see that he does something strange and revelatory and really singular with everything he buys and adapts.’

Similarly, when asked about the 2025 production of his Booker Prize-winning novel, The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst described the adaptation process as ‘fascinating’, remarking on how ‘skilful’ writer Jack Holden was. Hollinghurst told the Guardian, ‘It’s been converted into a completely different medium with completely different terms and considerations… the priorities of the stage are quite different, and things which I feel might need to be explained can be conveyed by a gifted actor, just in a look or a gesture.’

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry directed by Katy Rudd, adapted from Rachel Joyce’s novel

Harold Fry, the unassuming hero of Rachel Joyce’s life-affirming story, is a man on a mission – to walk more than 600 miles to save a friend. The novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012.

A musical based on the book, and adapted by Rachel Joyce herself, with music and lyrics by Passenger, premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2025. It was a sell-out success and has now transferred to London, opening at the end of January 2026.

Joyce trained at RADA and worked as a theatre actor for 20 years. In an interview with London Theatre, she said, ‘I’ve realised there is a theatricality to my fiction – it must be because theatre is in my bones. Not to mention the book is quite episodic, with Harold stopping to meet new people, so it really lends itself to the musical format, where each person can open up their heart through song…

‘Fundamentally the story is about ordinary people being capable of beautiful things. I still hold onto that, even when things are tough, and the show just encapsulates it so perfectly. It’s such a generous piece of theatre that you feel like you’ve been hugged.’

The Years directed by Eline Arbo, adapted from Annie Ernaux’s novel

Autobiography morphs into new shapes in Annie Ernaux’s genre-bending book, translated from French by Alison L Strayer and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. 

Although perhaps not an obvious candidate for theatre, a Dutch-language stage adaptation of The Years premiered in 2022 at Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, directed by Eline Arbo. The play was a big hit with audiences and toured in the Netherlands. In it, a cast of five women play the central character, representing her at different stages of her life.

Arbo went on to direct an English-language version of the play, adapted by Stephanie Bain and staged to critical acclaim at the Almeida and Harold Pinter Theatres in London. It won two Olivier Awards in 2025, including best director. 

In an interview with the Guardian, Arbo said of Ernaux, ‘I’m very happy she gave me the rights. This is quite a radical adaptation. It takes the work and makes something else out of it. I made my own work of art out of her work of art.’

A review in the Evening Standard described the play as an ‘enthralling stage adaptation… a perfect dramatic extrapolation of Ernaux’s slippery narrative’.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead directed by Simon McBurney, adapted from Olga Tokarczuk’s novel

Olga Tokarczuk’s subversive, entertaining neo-noir, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019. Set in a remote village in south-west Poland, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead follows the story of Janina Dusezjko, an eccentric woman in her 60s, who describes the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. 

Complicité – an international touring theatre company known for its experimental, multidisciplinary work – coproduced an adaptation of the novel which opened at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, in 2022, before touring widely across the UK and Europe. It won the Catalan Critics Award for Best International Show in 2024.

Writing in the Guardian, Kate Kellaway said, ‘The fascinating thing is that, were you to read the novel without knowing Complicité was making a show of it, you could almost guess that it might’. Kellaway commented on the affinity between Tokarczuk’s ‘comic imagination and the company’s preoccupation with darkness, physicality and the eccentric’.

My Name is Lucy Barton directed by Richard Eyre, adapted from Elizabeth Strout’s novel

An extended hospital stay offers an estranged mother and daughter an opportunity to reconnect in Elizabeth Strout’s Booker-longlisted novel, nominated in 2016. As Lucy recovers from what should have been a routine operation, she reflects on her impoverished childhood, her escape to New York City, her faltering marriage, and her love for her own daughters.

My Name is Lucy Barton was first staged at The Bridge Theatre in London in 2018, and again in 2019, before opening on Broadway in 2020. Performed as a monologue, acclaimed actor Laura Linney took on the titular role in both London and New York. 

In a conversation with Elizabeth Strout ahead of rehearsals, playwright Rona Munro explained, ‘The work of adaptation has been a delight, and no work at all. Lucy has a voice, a clear, storytelling voice, which talks directly to an audience. The theatricality of that is already in place. All I had to do was arrange it and fit it into a shorter space of time.’

Writing in the Guardian, Michael Billington said, ‘Novels, depending on the stream of time, rarely make good plays. Elizabeth Strout’s first-person narrative, longlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2016, however, breaks the rules and fits perfectly on the stage. That’s partly because of the quality of the writing and partly because of a beautifully nuanced solo performance by Laura Linney.’

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies directed by Jeremy Herrin, adapted from Hilary Mantel’s novels

In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel peels back history to explore the rich intersection of individual psychology and wider politics in Tudor England. The book won the Booker Prize in 2009, with the judges remarking it was ‘extraordinary in its technique, its confidence’. Mantel won again in 2012 with its gripping sequel, Bring Up the Bodies.

Stage adaptations of both books opened at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2013, with Ben Miles playing Thomas Cromwell. This gave dedicated fans the unique opportunity to watch both plays in one day – six hours viewing in total. The plays transferred to the West End in 2014, and onto Broadway in 2015. 

Mantel was closely involved. Writing in the New York Times, she explained: ‘For the stage, we don’t need look-alikes, I said. We don’t need stars. Just a company of self-effacing shape-shifters who will play three and four parts, ripping themselves fiercely in and out of costumes and story lines, who will embody the vitality and passion of the Tudors inside my head. We need a director who is an expert in urgency, who will whip up magic and make the story fly.’

Michael Billington, in a review covering both plays for the Guardian, wrote, ‘Even if Mantel’s poetic eye for detail gets somewhat lost, Mike Poulton has done an outstanding job in turning the books into two epic three-hour plays that, in Jeremy Herrin’s RSC production, make for a gripping piece of narrative theatre.’

Vernon God Little directed by Rufus Norris, adapted from DBC Pierre’s novel

DBC Pierre’s darkly comic debut won the Booker Prize in 2003. The main protagonist is an acerbic, foul-mouthed 15-year-old boy who’s on the run after a mass shooting at his high school in Texas.

The stage adaptation was first performed at the Young Vic, London, in 2007 and nominated for an Olivier Award for best new play. It was revised and revived in 2011 as the centrepiece of the Young Vic’s 40th anniversary season.

In a review for Variety, David Benedict noted the play’s ‘defiant, no-middle-ground tone’, saying it was a ‘keynote both of Tanya Ronder’s tightly-written adaptation – it feels like an original work – and Rufus Norris’ cartoon-like, helter-skelter production.’