Nine Booker Prize-nominated novels that explore toxic relationships

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann

Set against the backdrop of a divided Germany, this year’s International Booker Prize winner explores a doomed affair between a young woman and an older man in 1980s East Berlin. Katharina, a student, and Hans, a worldly retired academic, are drawn together through a chance encounter. Bound initially by shared passions for music and art, the couple gradually descend into manipulation and cruelty, yet neither is able to escape their situation. 

Erpenbeck chooses not to shy away from uncomfortable moments, writing with a neutral lens about Hans and Katharina’s jealousy and sadomasochism, violence and cruelty. It’s a love story that offers parallels with the trajectory of the GDR – a country moving from idealism to self-destruction. Eleanor Wachtel, Chair of the International Booker Prize 2024 judges, said Kairos was ‘a devastating, even brutal love affair’. What makes it so unusual, Wachtel said, ‘is that it is both beautiful and uncomfortable, personal and political’. ‘Like the GDR, it starts with optimism and trust, then unravels.’

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

In 2015, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life became a publishing sensation, evolving from a sleeper hit into one of the most buzzed-about titles of the year. Selling millions of copies and amassing a devoted online following, the novel’s success is all the more remarkable, given it is an often harrowing 700-page examination of deep trauma and enduring abuse.

Four graduates attempt to find their way in New York City, broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. Jude serves as their centre of gravity, a man whose shocking past shadows his present, trapping him in relentless cycles of suffering. In his early forties, Jude enters a profoundly abusive relationship after a meeting at a dinner party. Caleb’s disdain for Jude’s vulnerabilities manifests in physical and emotional cruelty, which Jude tolerates, believing he doesn’t deserve any better after a lifetime of abuse. 

Despite being labeled as ‘torture porn’ by some critics, A Little Life continues to find new readers. Its unflinching portrayal of trauma and resilience ensures that it remains a powerful, if contentious, exploration of the limits of human endurance. 

• A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar, translated by Stefan Tobler

In A Cup of Rage, Raduan Nassar crafts an explosive affair between an older man and a younger female journalist over the course of a single night in the Brazilian outback. Their relationship rapidly disintegrates into a vicious battle of wills and egos: ‘Our love was a kind of cannibalism; we fed on each other, consuming the flesh of our desires,’ Nassar writes.

Written in the 1970s by the reclusive Brazilian author Raduan Nassar and translated from Portuguese by Stefan Tobler 40 years later, the novel was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2016. Comprised of seven chapters which rattle along using unbroken sentences, the structure often demands careful reading; it builds in tension, often buckling under the weight of the tussle unfolding. The narrative is almost entirely dictated by the man’s internal monologue, transitioning from lust to fury, and rage to desperation. Expect vitriolic insults and warring egos – with a dash of eroticism – in this anxiety-ridden read.

The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan

A romantic European getaway takes a dark turn in The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan’s chilling 1981 shortlisted novella, which follows a well-to-do English couple as they unintentionally become entangled with two locals with sinister intentions. 

In the labyrinthine streets of Venice, Colin and Mary encounter Robert, a seedy bar owner, and his disabled wife, Caroline. As they are drawn into the couple’s orbit, it is clear all is not what it seems. There’s a twisted dynamic of pain and pleasure within their relationship and Caroline discloses Robert’s violent tendencies, which inflicted a lifelong injury on her: ‘It was not so much that he wanted to possess her, but rather that he wanted to take her to a place where no one else could ever follow’. A desire for dominance lies at the heart of McEwan’s eerie novel, with a narrative that threatens to throw readers off balance at every page-turn.

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

By the time she wrote The Black Prince, Iris Murdoch had already been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice, for The Nice and the Good in 1969, and Bruno’s Dream a year later.

Widely regarded as her best work, The Black Prince is part metafictional thriller, part love story, where ex-tax collector Bradley Pearson wishes to devote his retirement to writing ‘a masterpiece’. He’s a deeply unlikable man – pretentious, cruel, dismissive, and narcissistic. He is also determined to seduce Julian, his friend’s daughter, 30 years his junior. Preying on her naivety, Bradley whisks her away to a seaside cottage to evade her mother and father and the pair declare love. But their short-lived romance quickly unravels when Julian finds out Bradley’s real age, and he violently assaults her.

‘More than almost any other writer, [Murdoch] understands the currents beneath the surface: the way that inappropriate crushes, egotism, loathing, loneliness, can overcome apparently calm lives,’ wrote novelist Charlotte Mendelson, reviewing the book for the Guardian. Murdoch’s ability to explore the deep and often disturbing undercurrents of human behaviour in The Black Prince solidified her reputation as a masterful storyteller, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1973.