10 Booker Prize-nominated books featuring complicated sibling relationships

There are very few people who will see you in every era of your life, from childhood through to old age. As Jeffrey Kluger, an editor at TIME said in a TED Talk, ‘Our parents leave us too early, our spouses and children come along too late. Our siblings are the only ones who are with us for the entire ride…’   

Brothers and sisters are often some of our first friends and can have a huge influence throughout our early years and adolescence, helping to shape our personalities and perspectives of the world. Yet sibling relationships can be complicated and tumultuous, as arguments spiral into grudges or feuds that can fester for years, even decades.  

These 10 Booker-nominated books provide a glimpse into some seriously turbulent sibling relationships. Whether it’s jealously, estrangement, or unwavering loyalty, these books will have you reflecting on the bonds you have with your own siblings. They may even entice you to give them a call… or not. 

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma 

Four brothers contend with the consequences of a mystic prophecy in Chigozie Obioma’s Booker Prize 2015 shortlisted novel. The boys – Ben, Obembe, Boja and Ikenna – ignore their father’s warnings and visit a forbidden river. There, they come across a man whose prediction threatens to destroy their entire family.  

After learning of the prophecy, 15-year-old Ikenna starts to behave irrationally and isolates himself from everyone. While the other brothers try to reassure him, a series of tragic events ensue, and the family unit is shattered by violence. 

Obioma was inspired by the relationship he has with his own siblings; he has seven brothers and four sisters. In an interview with the Booker Prizes, he said ‘I realised that I had a stronger bond with my siblings than I ever imagined and a curiosity as to what could fracture that bond.’  

According to Lucy Scholes, writing in the Independent, ‘One of the many delights of The Fishermen is how deeply multi-layered the narrative is. Commonplace sibling rivalry is elevated to the realm of classical literature, where a one-time confidant comes “descending like a fallen angel” from his beloved older sibling’s side; and a proud father’s hubris brings all the weight of Aristotelian tragedy crashing down on his shoulders.’ 

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie 

Home Fire reimagines the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, transposing it to modern-day Britain. Twenty-eight-year-old Isma Pasha has been raising her two younger siblings, 19-year-old twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, since their mother died when they were 12. Now the twins have reached adulthood, Isma decides to seek out further education in America. 

Isma protects her younger siblings fiercely, though her loyalty is tested when Parvaiz joins the militant jihadist group ISIS, and bonds break when Isma and Aneeka find they have opposing opinions on betrayal and protection. Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017, Home Fire explores the intersection between familial allegiance and morality. 

Writing for the Guardian, Natalie Haynes said, ‘Home Fire pulls off a fine balancing act: it is a powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world, while tipping its hat to the same dilemma in the ancient one.’ 

Atonement by Ian McEwan 

Thirteen-year-old Briony and her older sister Cecilia’s lives are irrevocably changed after a devastating misunderstanding. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, Atonement is set across three time periods – 1935, 1940 and 1999 – and follows Briony as she contends with the consequences of her fateful mistake and seeks redemption. 

In an interview with Penguin, Ian McEwan said ‘Briony was fashioned out of the spare rib of her older sister, Cecilia. The younger Miss Tallis began life as a bit-player’. Briony, who is young and naive, possesses a creative imagination and sees her older sister as distant and in need of saving. 

John Updike, writing for the New Yorker, said: ‘Atonement, in its tenderness and doubleness and final effect of height, in its postmodern concern with its own writing, and in its central topic of two upper-class sisters in the period between the world wars, has a striking happenstance resemblance to Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Both revert, from the perspective of an old woman facing death near the bloated end of the twentieth century, to an era when a certain grandeur could attach to human decisions.’ 

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler 

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2014, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves follows the eccentric Cooke family, as intelligent yet socially awkward Rosemary tries to understand her unusual childhood. She has academic parents, an activist brother, Lowell, and a whirlwind ‘twin sister’, Fern. 

Rosemary and Fern have an unorthodox relationship and, while we won’t include any spoilers, it sets the tone for the entire novel. Both of Rosemary’s siblings disappear when she’s just a child, and she’s left feeling guilty and confused, questioning her own memories. 

Billy O’Callaghan, writing in the Irish Examiner, called the novel an astonishing achievement: ‘Giant-stepping back and forth through the life of its put-upon narrator, Rosemary Cooke, the youngest of three siblings, the reader is treated to a wild ride of tragic hilarity, but one which only ever serves to heighten its beautiful, heartbreaking core.’  

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri 

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2013, The Lowland explores the trauma that leaks through generations and highlights the lasting bonds of brotherhood. 

Subhash and Udayan are brothers from Calcutta. Born 15 months apart, they are inseparable as children. Subhash is the more reserved of the two, while Udayan is fiery and more rebellious. The brothers drift apart in adulthood, taking completely opposite paths, and Udayan becomes involved in the communist Naxalite movement. Their loyalty to each other is tested after a horrible incident rearranges Subhash’s once cautious and predictable life. 

Anita Sethi, writing for the Guardian, said, ‘Tracing how brotherly bonds become broken by violent politics, it is suffused with sadness… This is a novel in which the most tender of ties are torn asunder’. While Ron Charles, writing for the Washington Post, said that the novel is about ‘the intimacy of siblings,’ claiming that The Lowland has ‘complicated the ancient story of sibling rivalry by infusing it with real affection, capturing the way these two brothers need and rely on each other’.