12 of the best novels for Pride Month from the Booker Library

It’s noteworthy that for the past four years The Booker Prize has been awarded to novels whose central characters are lesbian, gay, bisexual or non-binary. Amongst the diverse range of individuals portrayed in Bernardine Evaristo’s polyphonic Girl, Woman, Other a lesbian socialist playwright and a popular non-binary blogger feature prominently. The eponymous Scottish boy in Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain is a sensitive and effeminate adolescent described as ‘no right’ by his neighbours. In Damon Galgut’s The Promise, winner of the 2021 prize, Amor increasingly distances herself from her toxic family while engaging in romantic relationships with women and working with AIDS patients. Amongst his numerous missions, the recently deceased male hero and self-declared ‘slut’ in Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, winner of last year’s Booker, seeks to reconnect with his lover, DD, who is a politician’s closeted son.

It’s a coincidence that all of these recent trophy-snatching novels happen to include queer characters, but it also reflects a welcome burgeoning visibility of LGBTQ+ experiences in new fiction. Sometimes these characters’ sexualities are integral to the plot, as they face both direct and institutionalised homophobia. Sometimes it’s simply another facet of their identity. Some characters proudly declare their sexuality while others keep it an uncomfortable secret. From the virtuous to the villainous, these nuanced characters show the complexity and multiplicity of identity.

I’ve searched through the Booker archives to select a range of books that testify to the range of these experiences. From recently listed titles to older fiction, the novels in this list highlight compelling and unique representations of the struggle for equality and honest expressions of selfhood, capturing a wide spectrum of queer life. 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

Not only was the 2019 Booker Prize significant for the judges’ controversial decisions to jointly award the prize, Bernardine Evaristo was also the first woman with Black heritage to win. Her enthralling novel shuttles between the stories of 12 central characters, most of whom are women, Black and British. Often when the experiences of Black and queer individuals are included in British fiction they bear the burden of representing whole communities of diverse individuals. Evaristo’s novel brilliantly shows that though identity labels may be a significant part of her characters’ lives, they do not define them. It demonstrates that there is no one singular truth about these complex individuals coming of age in the wake of feminism, Black consciousness and/or queer rights. There’s an immense pleasure in following their everyday reality and discovering how their stories are ingeniously linked together. 
 

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

In this 2015 Booker-winning novel, Marlon James uses several distinct narrators to fictionalise one of the most famous incidents in Jamaican history: the 1976 assault upon Bob Marley’s house which resulted in the reggae legend, his wife and his manager being shot by unknown gunmen. Though the book is famous for its detailed exploration of this scandalous attack and the politics surrounding it, it’s less widely discussed that two of its male narrators actively have sex with other men. Gangster Weeper and hit man John-John K differently wrestle with their own sense of masculinity within a homophobic culture while steeped in their violent professions. These characters challenge stereotypical notions of gay men and emerge as highly compelling individuals who have alternative ways of inhabiting their sexuality. Interestingly, in the last sentence of Marlon James’ acknowledgements at the end of the book, he warns his mother away from reading the fourth part of this novel which contains some very graphic sexual content. 

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

Though Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things won the Booker in 1997, her fans needed to wait 20 years for her next novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Longlisted for the prize in 2017, this book is a long, intricately layered, surprising and wondrous depiction of a society in transition. At the beginning of the story we’re introduced to Anjum, who is born with both male and female genitals. She is raised as a boy and leaves her family in adolescence to live as a woman in a collective called ‘The House of Dreams’, made up of trans and intersex people. Not only does this provide her an important support network when her family brand her a disgrace, but she demonstrates her nurturing instinct by adopting an abandoned child. This voluminous novel expands to encompass many tales of individuals displaced by social and political conflicts. Though frank in its depiction of heart-wrenching turmoil, it’s moreover a story of love, chosen family, community, the power of protest and defiant beauty.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Debut novel Shuggie Bain was published and won the Booker in 2020 amidst the height of the Covid pandemic. As such, instead of being able to engage in elaborate festivities when the novel was longlisted, author Douglas Stuart and his husband were in lockdown. They famously celebrated the book’s success by heating a frozen pizza and digging out a dusty old bottle of champagne from the fridge. It was a cosy victory for this book which was a decade in the making. It draws heavily upon Stuart’s own childhood, growing up in Glasgow among a working-class community where masculine standards meant boys were discouraged from showing their emotions. Shug has a budding awareness of his homosexuality which he feels compelled to repress while struggling to care for his alcoholic mother. However, he can’t hide his true self forever. It’s impressive that a tale so harrowing can also contain so much warmth, humour and humanity.

Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward

For many years Sophie Ward has worked as a fabulous actress and this debut, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, proved her to be one of literature’s most innovative new writers. Just as many people’s sexual identity doesn’t fit into neat categories, this highly inventive book can’t be classified as belonging to any one genre. It’s a tender family story which takes place over multiple decades following a lesbian couple who have a child. It delves into the specific complexities involved with queer parenthood, but also how these characters face challenges that have nothing to do with their sexuality. In addition to exploring a family’s personal life, this conceptual novel considers the meaning of consciousness, the shape of reality and the limits of perception. Told through a series of interlinked tales that focus on a range of different points of view, it veers from the perspective of an ant to considering the limits of outer space. It’s not often that such a thought-provoking book also contains so much heart.

Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson

The enduring classic Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus can be interpreted in many different ways, but its themes of alienation and loneliness strongly resonate with the queer community. There have been many re-imaginings of Mary Shelley’s novel that play upon issues to do with sexuality – not least of all the great rite of passage flick The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Winterson’s inventive novel Frankissstein, which was longlisted for the 2019 Booker, presents a dual narrative which switches between historical sections where Mary Shelley is in the process of writing her famous first novel and a near future where a non-binary individual named Ry Shelley engages in a complicated romantic relationship with secretive scientist Professor Stein. It’s immensely fun following the imaginative breadth of these twin tales whose themes combine to give a new view on the notorious fictional monster, the recurrence of prejudice over time and heteronormative ideology.