10 of the best anti-heroes in Booker Prize-nominated novels, for fans of Ripley

What exactly is an anti-hero? While the term, which dates back to the early 18th century, has always been quite loosely defined, it is often used to describe protagonists who defy conventional heroic traits, such as courage, integrity or compassion. Instead, antiheroes are often deeply flawed characters, with questionable values, a skewed moral compass and an unreliable point of view. Although they’re not without their attractions.

Case in point: Tom Ripley, the charming con artist at the heart of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 crime novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, described by the Guardian as a ‘likeable psychopath’ who ‘wheedles his way into our sympathies’. Now adapted into a hit neo-noir Netflix miniseries, Ripley stars Andrew Scott as the man himself, and follows his web of deceit as he’s hired by a wealthy shipping magnate, Herbert Greenleaf, to convince his son Dickie to return home. Yet Ripley soon grows jealous of Dickie’s lavish lifestyle and stops at nothing to obtain what Dickie has, in a relentless pursuit of wealth and status. 

Filmed entirely in striking black and white, the new series offers a fresh take on Highsmith’s almost 70-year-old novel (which was also adapted into a hit film by Anthony Minghella in 1999, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow), inviting viewers into the dark and twisted mind of one of literature’s most iconic antiheroes. So if Ripley has left you craving more, we’ve rounded up ten characters from Booker Prize-nominated novels below, all of whom share Ripley’s morally ambiguous qualities.

Me in The Sellout by Paul Beatty 

In the fictional farming town of Dickens, California, the narrator – referred to as both ‘Me’ and ‘Bonbon’ – reflects on his childhood after he finds himself on trial in the Supreme Court for attempting to reinstate racial segregation and slavery – all in contemporary America. Me grew up reading Freud and Jung and is described as unassuming and sensitive. But after an isolated youth, during which he was subjected to his father’s race-centric social experiments, Me becomes an awkward young man. 

His father is then murdered by the police, and as a result, Me struggles to find meaning in his life. So when Dickens is removed from the map of California, he is determined to bring it back, albeit through a series of deluded actions. Paul Beatty’s satirical, 2016 Booker Prize-winning novel takes racial stereotypes and attitudes and injects them with absurdism and irony. 

Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe

Frances ‘Francie’ Brady is the protagonist of Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, a 12-year-old schoolboy whose behaviour becomes increasingly concerning as he begins bullying a new student. Growing up in an abusive environment with an alcoholic father and a suicidal mother, Brady finds himself riddled with anger, justifying his actions through a series of delusions. In a stream of conscious narrative, McCabe infuses dark humour into this bleak novel which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1992. Cruel and clearly disturbed, Francie becomes more and more violent as The Butcher Boy progresses, and he begins displaying psychopathic tendencies. Readers of the novel have described Francie as ‘a twisted Huckleberry Finn’ descending into madness and despair.

Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Winner of the 2009 Booker Prize, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has become a modern classic which reinvigorated the historical fiction genre. Set in England in the 1520s, the novel follows Thomas Cromwell, who served as Henry VIII’s most trusted advisor. Cromwell is charming yet ruthless, the son of a blacksmith turned political genius. Described by Henry himself as being as ‘cunning as a bag of serpents,’ Cromwell is endlessly resourceful but cold and calculating, as he helps the king divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Mantel’s depiction of the complex, cut-throat world of the Tudors, and her decision to spotlight a historical figure who previously only existed in the shadows, saw her become the first woman to win the Booker twice and the first person to win for two novels in a trilogy. 

Eileen in Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

In Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2016 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Eileen, a lonely and unstable young woman strikes up a friendship that soon alters the course of her life. Eileen Dunlop works at a juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys and lives with her abusive, alcoholic father. Uncomfortable in her own skin, she suffers from body dysmorphia, a consequence of her traumatic childhood, and her head is full of disturbing thoughts. Eileen desires connection with a glamorous new work colleague, but events take a sinister turn when she is implicated in a chilling crime. Pitiable yet simultaneously unlikable, Eileen, as noted by the Guardian, elicits both sympathy and revulsion in the reader: ‘She has a hardness, a sort of mild sociopathy that allows her to hurt someone and use their prone body to pull herself into freedom and safety.’

Tambu in This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, This Mournable Body focuses on the inequalities and injustices that Tambudzai Sigauke (Tambu) faces living amongst unrest and corruption in Harare in the late 1990s. Hailing from a small Zimbabwean village, Tambu is determined to escape her troubled background, but after gaining access to a middle-class education, she still finds herself struggling, descending into poverty after leaving an unsatisfying job where she faced gender and racial discrimination. Uncertain of her identity and full of self-loathing, Tambu experiences a series of events which further shake her confidence. ‘Dangarembga gives us something rare’ the Washington Post wrote – ‘a sparkling antiheroine we find ourselves rooting for’.