Following the Booker Prize 2023 shortlist announcement, Jo and James share a hot off the press reaction to this year’s six finalists before heading onto the topic at hand: which year saw the best ever Booker Prize shortlist? To help Jo and James along the way, they’re joined by Bob Jackson – a man who has read every single book ever shortlisted for the award. That’s over 300 books, spanning from the Booker’s inception in 1969 up to the present day. So, listen in and find out which shortlist gets crowned as the best one ever.

• Ask Bob to reveal his favourite (and least favourite) books from the Booker archive
• Hear how Bob approached his quest to read every Booker-shortlisted book
• Discuss their contenders for which year’s shortlist is best
• Argue it out until just one shortlist is crowned the winner

Transcripts of The Booker Prize Podcast are generated using both speech recognition software and human transcribers, and as a result, may contain errors.

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James Walton:

Jo, it’s Booker Prize shortlist time and hot off the press we’ll be bringing you this year’s final six books.

Jo Hamya:

It is, and that’s not all. To celebrate the announcement of this year’s shortlist, we’ll be debating what we think the best Booker shortlist of all time is, and we’re going to be doing that with a really special guest.

James Walton:

This is Bob Jackson, a man who’s not only read every single book that’s ever been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but more astonishingly still, as far as I can see, he’s remembered them all, so he’ll be bringing his encyclopaedic knowledge to bear on proceedings.

Jo Hamya:

I’m Joe Hamya.

James Walton:

I’m James Walton, and welcome to the Booker Prize Podcast. Okay then Jo, let’s give the listeners the big six of this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. They are Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein, If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery.

Jo Hamya:

And the Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, and This Other Eden by Paul Harding.

James Walton:

So first reactions, Jo. My first reaction is that’s got to be the first ever Booker shortlist with three people called Paul on it.

Jo Hamya:

I think they should have a convention, Paul Con. It would be great. My reaction is that I actually finished The Bee Sting at the beginning of this week, and I violently sobbed, really ugly cried for about 400 pages of that book. It’s like 600 pages long, so that’s quite an achievement, isn’t it? And my partner found me on the sofa about 11:00 o’clock at night just going [inaudible 00:01:33]. And he was like, “What is wrong with you?” And I was like, “It’s not me, it’s Paul Murray. He’s done this to me.” So I think that’s really, really well deserved. And I’ve also started Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, which I’m actually really, really enjoying, but in a much calmer, kind of collected way.

James Walton:

Yeah, well look, okay, you put me to shame a bit there, Jo, because I’ve read none of them at this stage. But that will be put right, because we’re going to bring two podcasts, count them, two, in which we discuss, in some depth, the whole shortlist. So that’ll be, obviously mathematicians can work out, three per episode. And that’ll be coming up in October.

Jo Hamya:

James and I had a fabulous night last night at the National Portrait Gallery at the shortlist announcement, quaffing champagne-

James Walton:

That’s right.

Jo Hamya:

… Oozing intelligence, walking around.

James Walton:

Hanging out with our literary mates. I even got out of my Beatles t-shirt, got into my glad rags, and that was for that swanky do at the National Portrait Gallery, where we heard those six books announced.

Can’t wait to get stuck into them like we got stuck into the champagne.

Jo Hamya:

So all of that being said, I think we should get to the main body of this episode because our guest is genuinely phenomenal. He is a man who has outdone both James and I by reading all 315 Booker novels. I mean, truly putting us to shame. And we thought, who better than that kind of expert to debate the best shortlist of all time? And to do that, we’ve got a special guest with us, Bob Jackson. Hi Bob.

Bob Jackson:

Hello.

James Walton:

Well, I suppose let’s have a few fairly obvious but interesting questions, to me anyway. What’s your favourite ever winner?

Bob Jackson:

My favourite ever winner is the… And there’s not much of a contest here because it’s a fabulous book. It’s the Narrow Road to the Deep North.

James Walton:

Richard Flanagan.

Bob Jackson:

Yes, about Burma and the death railway and prisoners of war. He’s Australian and it was based on an Australian character. His father, I think it was his father, was actually a prisoner of war. And it was the winner in 2014, I believe.

James Walton:

Yeah, okay. It is a terrific book.

Bob Jackson:

Powerful book.

James Walton:

Yeah.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah. Really emotionally powerful.

James Walton:

And least favourite winner? Still with winners.

Bob Jackson:

Least favourite winner?

James Walton:

Least favourite winner.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah, I’m in good company, I think, here because one of the judges at the time said, “If this wins I’m packing up because it’s bleep,” create your own adjective. And it’s How Late It Was, How Late, James Kelman.

James Walton:

Which I really like. I think I’m about-

Bob Jackson:

This is great.

James Walton:

I’m the only person… For people who don’t know it, it’s essentially a sweary, stream of consciousness from a Glaswegian drunk. Would that be-

Bob Jackson:

That is a perfect summary. Yeah, I wish he’d just written that and then submitted it.

James Walton:

I suppose it’s not exactly an easy ready but it stirred me.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah.

Jo Hamya:

I guess my questions are a bit nerdier. Did you have a system while you were reading? Did you go chronologically or just by taste?

Bob Jackson:

Not to start with. Certainly not by taste. But when I started this I sort of mentally piled up 300 plus books in front of me. I thought, I’m never going to do this. So I just picked books as they came along on the bookshelf, just had them in a queue. I think I put them in alphabetic order, but not in year order. And then I was maybe a third of the way through and thought, there has got to be a better way of doing this because I’m not really enjoying the comparisons of the six shortlisted ones in any one year. So then, quite early in the process, started to look at each year in a block, which, by and large, was doable, with a few exceptions, because some books were tough to get hold of.

James Walton:

Some people, obviously not us, on the Booker Prize podcast, have used the word Booker novel in a slightly derogatory way. Were there any books that made you think, oh God, here we go again?

Bob Jackson:

No.

James Walton:

Okay, good. Oh, there we are. So we’re fine. So those people are all wrong. Okay.

Bob Jackson:

There are a lot of people out there who have an immediate negative attitude towards the Booker Prize. It’s elitist, it no way represents current global literature in any way, and it’s just about the money. That’s codswallop.

Jo Hamya:

There’s not much money in it anyway. What’s 50 grand in the current economy?

Bob Jackson:

Absolutely. Yeah.

James Walton:

I mean, we promised right at the start that we’re not a propaganda podcast, but I do think the Booker Prize is pretty high-minded. I really do think it sets out to find the best novel of the year.

Jo Hamya:

So Bob, if we’re going to widen the scope a little bit to all shortlisted novels, what has been your favourite?

Bob Jackson:

Can I just start by saying I finished the 315 books, as were the shortlist, up to including 2021, in October 2022. Actually finished the 315th when the winner of that year was announced just by a fluke, I think. But I’d got two books in mind as I finished the whole thing, which seemed to be fairly equal as my favourites. One we mentioned, which was The Narrow Road to the Deep North. And the other one, which has, over that period of time since then, has really risen to become my clear favourite, and that’s A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. And it’s the most extraordinary book. It’s a difficult book, it’s brutal, it’s raw. But the characters she creates, the principle for best mates living in New York, with Jude and his other mate, they just stuck with me. And I still feel a real affinity to those characters, and particularly Jude. And I thought the book was absolutely tremendous. But more so than that, it’s just the whole offer in that book, it’s tremendous.

Jo Hamya:

Okay, so now is perhaps the time to move on.

James Walton:

The plan is we are going to try and, between ourselves agree, which might be ambitious, on the best ever shortlist. We’ve all brought two along, which we’re going to explain, I think we’ll go around, do one each. So Bob, what’s your first nomination for best ever Booker shortlist ever, ever?

Bob Jackson:

1985. And 1985, the winner was the brilliant The Bone People.

James Walton:

By Keri Hulme. And another one that divided people.

Bob Jackson:

Yes, it has. Yes it has, but I just love the way the book starts and how she develops the young child’s personality and all that follows. I thought it was tremendous.

James Walton:

Again, just for people who don’t know, this is set among the sort of Aboriginal people of New Zealand, isn’t it?

Bob Jackson:

Correct, it is.

James Walton:

And in fact, she didn’t turn up, but she sent-

Jo Hamya:

Two Maori women.

James Walton:

To two Maori women who sort of ululated their way to the stage.

Bob Jackson:

For the acceptance.

James Walton:

Yeah, for the acceptance. Yeah.

Bob Jackson:

Wonderful.

James Walton: Okay. Yep.

Bob Jackson:

Yep. But also in that year, there are a couple of other really crucial books, to me, in terms of my enjoyment of the whole process. There are two of my top 10. I did this mental top 10 and made some notes. And two of my top 10 are Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, which is a simple, charming book in many respects, but it works on a number of levels. And the character and the innocence of that character, and then the sheer carnage that develops from that innocence, and the way she goes about delivering her belief in London in the ’60s is just really, really well articulated and put together.

The second one in my top 10, in that year, is Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris. It’s the only travel book in the Booker shortlist library, but it’s about a place that doesn’t exist. It’s a really, really clever piece of writing. Jan Morris was a journalist of some note. She was The Sunday Times correspondent on the ‘53 Everest expedition. And it’s about Hav, which is a fictional country, but I guarantee if you read this, you’ll be going to the internet trying to find out where Hav is. She makes it so real, but it’s completely invented. A charming, charming piece of writing.

And then also in there with those three, that’s the Bone People, The Good Terrorist, and Last Letters From Hav, there’s an Iris Murdoch. Fantastic. One of only two to be shortlisted six times in the history of the whole thing, and then a charming-

James Walton:

That’s The Good Apprentice, the Iris Murdoch?

Bob Jackson:

It is the Good Apprentice, I apologise. Yeah. And then J. L. Carr, the Battle of Pollocks Crossing, who’s been shortlisted twice, Jim Carr short books. Both of his books are really quite short books.

Jo Hamya:

What was the other? A Month in the-

Bob Jackson:

A Month in the Country.

Jo Hamya:

… Country. Yes.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah, about a war veteran coming back and finding love and losing it through his own nervousness, really. Yeah.

Illywhacker by Peter Carey. Yeah. What do you say about Peter Carey? It was one of his early books, just fantastic, just mental, the 139-year-old Illywhacker, which is defined as a common man basically. And I think it catapulted him into the public eye, that book, because-

James Walton:

Yeah, it was. That was his big breakthrough, yeah.

Bob Jackson:

It was a really, really good read. So the fact that there are two books amongst the six in my top 10, the fact that the winner I heartily approved of, and it could have gone to any of four, in my opinion, that year, the three I mentioned plus Illywhacker. And I just having gone through the 50, something like 54, 55 lists, that’s the one I came up with.

Jo Hamya:I’m going to start off with 1989. I have various reasons for this one. It’s partly on the strength of the novels, but also on the strength of the writers and of the kind of psychosocial affair around the ceremony that year. So the shortlist comprised James Kelman’s A Disaffection, which are you going to continue defending Kelman for me here, James?

James Walton:

I love A Disaffection. It ends, as far as I remember, with a sort of about 800 page thing of two brothers getting drunk together and just talking.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah.

James Walton:

That’s my kind of book.

Jo Hamya:

But it’s a week in the life of a thoroughly disenchanted 29 year old teacher who, I guess in the manner of a lot of social service workers, has just almost completely given up on the moral or politically structural worth of his job. And there is a loss of drunken ranting in there. There is a lot of chasing after another very pretty teacher down the school corridors.

The next book on the shortlist is Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, about a painter called Elaine, who, over the course of the novel, revisits a very strange set of friendships in her school years. It’s sort of a classic tale of schoolyard bullies, but quite distinctly feminine. And at the time it was sort of seen to overthrow quite twee narratives about all women being best friends in the pursuit of feminism.

Then we have Restoration by Rose Tremain, which is about a man called Merivel, who ends up in the court of King Charles because he cures his dog. And it’s about his fall from grace and gradual coming to self-awareness.

Next, there’s John Banville’s The Book of Evidence, which is a prison kind of monologue or testimony by a man called Freddie Montgomery. It’s quite surreal and gruesome.

Then Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford, which is actually… It strikes me as quite a kind of Jean Rhys novel set in the interwar years, semi-autobiographical, in which the narrator, Billi, tells the story of her childhood and later of her years on the coast of France, surrounded by artists and intellectuals who show her how to live a proper life.

And then there is, of course, the winner, which I think most Booker oriented people have read, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which concerns Stevens, the butler, as he negotiates working for a new American master and thinks over the mistakes of his past, which contain primarily working for a fascist aristocrat and letting the love of his life Miss Kenton go. He also spends a lot of time learning how to banter.

And I’ve chosen 1989… Just slightly convoluted. I was born in 1997, but I feel a weird sense of nostalgia over this list. A lot of the books concern a form of alienation.

James Walton:

Thanks, Jo. That is a strong list. Should I go for my first one?

Jo Hamya:

Yes, James, go ahead. Please tell us yours.

James Walton:

My first one is 1984. And there aren’t that many writers, I think, that I’ve read all the books of, but there’s two on this list, and in both cases it’s my favourite of all, which is Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes and Small World by David Lodge.

So the way Flaubert’s Parrot works is it’s about a guy who… His wife has died and he’s trying to make sense of it, and he tries to make sense of it through Flaubert, actually. It’s kind of displacement, but the displacement doesn’t quite work. I mean, there’s a lot of emotion in there. It’s sort of cliche to say about Julian Barnes that he’s best as an essayist, and I don’t think that’s true because this book is, I think, pretty heartbreaking too. But he’s very good at imparting information and just all sorts of stuff that crosses his mind. There’s a great section on literary mistakes, whether they matter.

So remember there’s the bit where in Lord of the Flies where Piggy’s glasses are used to set fire to something? They couldn’t have been used to set fire to him because he’s shortsighted, so the rays would’ve diverged rather than converged. It’s one of the funniest books, I think, that’s been on the Booker shortlist.

Bob Jackson:

I think it’s the funniest of the three in the-

James Walton:

I think it’s his best book.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah. Morris’s Zapp, what a character.

James Walton:

And then there was the hot favourite, which was Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard, later a Steven Spielberg movie. In fact, the book, he stopped taking bets on it. It’s based on his J.G. Ballard’s own childhood in Shanghai, when the Japanese invaded. But oddly enough, it lost out to Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, which is, by far, the quietest book on the shortlist. Anita Brookner is sometimes stereotyped writing about lonely, cardigan wearing spinsters with nice mansion flats in London.

Jo Hamya:

Sad girl, is it?

James Walton:

It sort of is. I’ve got a friend who swears there’s no Anita Brookner novel in which a lonely, old spinster doesn’t slop food into the bin after the failure of a beau to turn up for a meal. And Hotel du Lac is about a lonely woman. Edith Hope writes romantic novels, there’s the main character, and she has had an affair that’s ended… Well, she’s had some romantic disgrace that you find out about, back in London, and she’s come to a Lake Geneva, a hotel there, and she’d observes the guests. And not a colossal amount happens, but she observes them so beadily and observes herself so beadily. In a way, I suppose, I do think, as many people did at the time, it was lucky to win. But I’m sort of pleased it did.

And there is also… So I think for a good shortlist, you want a sort of little bit of controversy, which is that against all of those books, Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac wins, and then the other two I can’t claim to be entirely familiar with, but they are by… I do know, they’re both by extremely good authors. Anita Desai with In Custody. And then According to Mark by Penelope Lively, who went on to win the Booker three years later with Moon Tiger. So that seems a pretty good shortlist to me.

Jo Hamya:

So Bob, what’s your next shortlist for us?

Bob Jackson:

The year 2000 is my second year, and in that year, the wonderful Margaret Atwood won the Booker withthe Blind Assassin, which is a superbly constructed double story, if you will. It’s about a rich, Canadian industrialist and his family, who fall on hard times, and a woman who is writing a book called The Blind Assassin, which is a bit of a mental plot. But the way that Atwood weaves the two things together and keeps bringing you back to the present as it was. This is going back into the 1900s, 1920s, and it’s got one of the best opening lines in any Booker book, which is she quotes a year and says, “The year my sister drove her car off the bridge and into the river.” And you think, where is this going? It’s not the best opening sentence, but it’s one of the best.

So also in that year, Trezza Azzopardi, The Hiding Place, a fabulous novel set in the Maltese community of Tiger Bay in the ’60s. And The Hiding Place is because one of the many children of the principal character is a young woman, young girl, who hides in a particular room in the house because her father is somewhat violent. But it opens a whole new world, really, to me, as not having any experience of how a diverse mix Cardiff and Tiger Bay particularly was in the ’50s and ’60s, with Somalis, with Maltese, people from all over the world coming into the city through trade, through seaborne trade. And a very tight book and tight story. And if Atwood hadn’t been nominated that year, I think that may well have clinched it.

Michael Collins, the Keepers of Truth. That was not a book that I would go overboard with, and that almost stopped me choosing 2000 as my second list. But it didn’t because there is a Kazuo Ishiguro in there, When We Were Orphans, a fabulous, fabulous book, like I think all his four shortlisted books, and indeed his other handful of novels.

Matthew Kneale, English Passengers, have you guys-

James Walton:

Oh yeah, I have read that.

Jo Hamya:

I haven’t read it.

James Walton:

That’s an astonishing book, actually.

Bob Jackson:

It’s just a romp through seafaring, nefarious… And it’s just fantastic. It’s fundamentally about someone seeking, some guy in the 19th century, seeking the Garden of Eden. And he’s onboard this ship to get passage to the far side of the world. But these guys don’t realise they’re onboard this ship, which is a Manx smuggling, Isle of Man smuggling ship, with a classic double hold, double skin. And stashed between the two skins of the ship is all sorts of stuff. And it’s a romp really. It’s a very, very clever, comedic novel, but most enjoyable.

The Deposition of Father McGreevy is a strange little novel, Brian O’Doherty. And it starts off with a guy accidentally overhearing a conversation in a pub in London, about a village in Kerry where he grew up and some sort of strange goings-on with regard to the Catholic… Why should I be surprised about strange goings-on in Ireland with regard to Catholic priests? But he goes back to Ireland to try and investigate what’s actually happened in this particular village.

James Walton:

That was one of the early ones to do that, though, wasn’t it, in a way?

Bob Jackson:

It is quite early on.

James Walton:

Yeah.

Bob Jackson:

Before anything really hit the fan.

James Walton:

Yeah, before it became almost a sort of cliche of Irish literature, really.

Jo Hamya:

Okay, well, I haven’t ranked my two lists. For me, they’re sort of on equal par, and I think that’s because I’ve chosen them more on the basis of personal preference than anything else. But my second shortlist is from 2016, so I’m bringing us further up to date. And I’ve chosen this because I am always the youngest person in the room, recording this podcast.

So I have to say, I’m really embarrassed to say that the first time that I really, properly engaged with a Booker longlist or a Booker shortlist, as it was being announced and as speculation was rising around the press as to who would win. And the first time that Booker took on any sort of importance in my consciousness was in 2013. And I was, God, how old was I? I Was 16, and I was trying to think, from that point on, in a contemporary, to me, sense, is there a shortlist that has been remarkable? Because I don’t just want to look back into a past I never lived in, James. I want to be proud of the present I exist in.

James Walton:

I think that’s allowed.

Jo Hamya:

And actually, when I stopped to look at the list for 2016, I found that it was full of novels that have actually, in one way or another, been quite formative to the literary landscape that I work in, or which have served, as really good examples of the current literary landscape that I work and write and read in. And that these books have probably shaped not only my thought, but the thought of a lot of my peers.

So we have, on the list, Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which is a kind of epic saga, spanning three generations from the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 to the book’s present day. And the protagonist sort of seeks to create a book of records of her ancestral history. That kind of puts me in mind of a whole set of books that I encountered.

My first literary job was as a bookseller in Waterstones, and at the time, books like Pachinko by Min Jin Lee or Homecoming by Yaa Gyasi were really just sweeping everyone’s consciousness. And so that book really encapsulated that movement for me.

Then we have Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk, which is this very short, very sweaty kind of mother-daughter psychological meltdown. Deborah Levy, for me, has been quite an influential writer. I think, as a result of reading writers like her, that I write quite short novels that tend to… Actually, maybe I write sad girl lit, James, now that I think about it.

James Walton:

And of the classiest possible kind.

Jo Hamya:

Of the classiest possible kind. Deborah Levy’s really good at making what seems like just ordinary family drama into a thriller, and that’s what Hot Milk does really well, and I see it’s children being spawned in a lot of what we’ve dubbed as sad girl lit in our present moment.

Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. Eileen, I should say, first of all, is just the weirdest, just most flatulent, dirty novel ever. It’s about the central character, Eileen, who lives with her alcoholic father and works in a prison, and who is absolutely enamoured with this woman she meets called Rebecca Saint John. Eileen regularly purges herself, she has an eating disorder. It’s just a deeply nasty, unpleasant book in the way that a lot of Moshfegh’s work is.

And Moshfegh, since 2016, I suppose, has become another sort of cultural icon for my generation. There’s a whole swathe of young women on TikTok touting My Year of Rest and Relaxation in the way that holding a Joan Didion novel used to be cool.

There’s also All That Man Is by David Szalay. Series of short stories that kind of take you through, I guess, the phases of life as a-

James Walton:

The book about nine… There are nine characters aren’t there?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, it’s sort of set up-

James Walton:

Different ages and then he draws them-

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, yeah. And quite an episodic structure.

And then Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, which isn’t so much a kind of who done it as a why done it? It’s a book centred around a murder trial that has gripped the British public. And it contains the memoir of the… is he 17?

James Walton:

Yes.

Jo Hamya:

Of the 17-year-old boy on trial, who seeks absolutely no absolution, who confesses to all these murders. And so really, through this memoir, through newspaper clippings and et cetera, you are less looking for who the murderer is, more what his motives are, why he’s so morally corrupt. How can he not feel any need for absolution or moral resolution?

And the winner for that year, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, whose protagonist, in a bid to put his small town in California back on the map, decides to reinstate segregation and slavery. And which actually you can listen to an episode on, from James and I, on your very own Booker Podcast.

James Walton:

Very much so a friend of the show.

Bob Jackson:

That’s interesting, that a lot of the things that are playing out now, you identify around 2016.

Jo Hamya:

I think it’s just an incredibly representative shortlist of where we were and where we’ve ended up. So James, what’s your final selection for us?

James Walton:

I’ve gone sort of modern, 2005.

Jo Hamya:

It’s a good one though.

James Walton: It is a good one. It was won by The Sea, by John Banville, which is, it is exquisitely written, as everybody always says about Banville, but this one particularly. A retired art historian looking back on his entire life with particular reference to the death of his loved ones. “It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize,” Someone said, but unfortunately it was Banville himself.

Oh, there’s also a good question on this one, which is, in what way was the 1978 Booker winner twice the novel that won in 2005?

Bob Jackson:

Pass.

James Walton:

It’s slightly corny. 1978, The Sea, the Sea. And this is just The Sea.

Bob Jackson:

Oh, God.

James Walton:

Come on, come on. But it was a close run thing, apparently. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro again. He’s showing up quite a lot. It seems to be, as usual with the Ishiguro, The Remains of The Day is not a book about a butler particularly. It’s a book about how you work with regret and so on. And in this particular case, I think it’s about, as people will know, sort of dystopian book in which people are bred for their organs, certain people, and they know they’re going to be dead by the time they’re 30. So the question we all think is, what’s the point of life if you’re going to be dead when you’re 30? What’s the point of anything? And then what’s the point of life when you know you’re going to be dead by 70 or 80? I think it’s a book about lifespan really. And again, done with as usual brilliance and subtlety.

Julian Barnes making another appearance with Arthur & George.

Bob Jackson:

Tremendous book.

James Walton:

It is a tremendous book.

Bob Jackson:

Tremendous book.

James Walton:

Both characters from real life, George Edalji, who’s wrongly imprisoned, sort of Asian background, wrongly imprisoned for killing farm animals in the early part of the 20th century. And Arthur is none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, who, neatly enough, turned detective to clear George’s name. And in the traditional Barnes’ way, we learned a lot about Doyle along the way. Just lots of interesting information thrown in.

On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Jo and I argue Zadie quite a lot, but I think On Beauty is the sort of perfect balance between her early funny ones and her later, more sombre work.

Jo Hamya:

I’m going to stick by NW being just a masterpiece.

James Walton:

Yeah, I do like the early, funny ones, but this is funny too, but it’s also-

Bob Jackson:

Yeah, it is funny.

James Walton:

Yeah, it’s really funny. But it’s also got, probably, a bit more depth to it than the early, funny ones. And hoping that some listeners will remember that Howard from On Beauty was in our Booker Love Island, punching above his weight with Marpessa from Paul Beatty’s The Sellout.

Jo Hamya:

Absolutely.

James Walton:

And then Marianne from Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Tragically, their shared discussions of Marxism weren’t enough to get them to the final. Although, rather to Marianne’s dismay, they did stay together for a while.

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry. And slightly mixed feelings about Sebastian Barry over the years, but this is one of his early ones, and I really… His subject for a while was basically what happened to his family, which was people who went away to fight for the British Army during the First World War because Ireland was part of Britain. And then they come back they’re suddenly traitors because they’ve been fighting for Britain.

Bob Jackson:

Absolutely.

James Walton:

They’ve been fighting for Britain, and now Ireland has had their… I mean, it’s a great subject that-

Bob Jackson:

Stunningly revelatory book.

James Walton:

And also, Ali Smith’s The Accidental, which also won the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year in that same year. Whitbread Book of the Year, I always was quite liked because it then became the Costas, but this was before it became the Costas. So there would be a novel, a first novel, nonfiction and poetry, and children’s, I think. And then you had to pick the best book of the year of all of those. And it was once put to the chairman of Whitbread Brewery, “How can you compare all these different things? It’s impossible.” And he said, “Oh, it’s easy enough. They do it at Crufts every year,” which absolutely caused the steam to come out of the ears of everybody in literary London, but I rather liked. So anyway, that’s my other one, 2005.

Bob Jackson:

Very good.

James Walton:

Which is-

Jo Hamya:

Very glamorous list actually. A lot of those names, Ali Smith, Zadie Smith, a lot of Smiths, actually.

James Walton:

Julian Barnes.

Jo Hamya:

Julian Barnes. I mean, are now kind of being painted into the pantheon of literary legends.

James Walton:

Everybody’s, unfortunately, annoyingly, made a terrific case for two years each, and we’ve got six. And

for some reason, we’ve set ourselves… All been set the task of finding the best ever Booker shortlist, ever, ever, ever, et cetera.

Bob Jackson:

It’s quite easy in my mind, James.

James Walton:

So first of all, I suppose, does anybody want to withdraw one of theirs? That would make it easier. I think, Bob, you’ve already-

Bob Jackson:

Well, if we have to arrive at one from six, then we’re all going to have to withdraw one, aren’t we?

Jo Hamya:

We should withdraw-

Bob Jackson:

Yes. With great reluctance, I’ll withdraw 2000.

James Walton:

Okay, so you are leaving-

Bob Jackson:

1985.

James Walton:

1985. Jo?

Jo Hamya:

I don’t know, James, I kind of want to know what your-

James Walton:

Past or present? That’s what you are faced with, isn’t it?

Jo Hamya:

I know.

James Walton:

You’ve got an absolute generational agony to face. Life before you were there, or actually what spurs you on. Yeah, it’s a tricky one.

Jo Hamya:

I hate to say it, but I think it is better… The books are better quality and everyone smoked indoors, and it was just so bitchy and glamorous. I’m going to go for 1989.

Bob Jackson:

Going to retain that one.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, I’m going to keep it. I’m going to keep 1989. I’m going to toss 2016 out the window. It was a terrible year, anyway. Trump, Brexit, who wants it?

James Walton:

Well, interestingly, I think, because it suggests something about decades of literature. 2005, I’m very sorry, just goodbye to-

Jo Hamya:

No, see, I would have chosen-

James Walton:

But I’m going to stick with 1984.

Jo Hamya:

I would’ve chosen 2005 as the winner if you’d kept it, James, this is the thing.

James Walton:

I’d loan it because I’m with sticking with-

Jo Hamya:

Loan it.

James Walton:

Oh, come on. So, rather interestingly, we’re left with a full 80s lineup. 1985 with the Bone People by Keri Hulme, Illywhacker, Peter Carey. The Battle of Pollocks by J.L. Carr, Doris Lessing’s The Good Terrorist. Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris and The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch.

Previous year, Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac, J.D. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun. Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot, Anita Desai, In Custody. Penelope Lively, According to Mark, and David Lodge’s Small World.

And if that’s not enough 80s for you, we’ve also got 1989, won by Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, with the shortlist of authors being Margaret Atwood with Cat’s Eye, John Banville, The Book of Evidence, Sybille Bedford Jigsaw, James Kelman, A Disaffection, and Rose Tremain, Restoration. I’m going to suggest something quite controversial, but quite Bookery. When we’re all stuck, compromise candidate, 2005.

Jo Hamya:

I would’ve chosen 2005 as an overall winner. But failing that, I would’ve gone for my own, 1989.

James Walton:

Bob?

Bob Jackson:

Well, with Julian Barnes, Sebastian Barry, and Ishiguro, it’s an extremely strong-

James Walton:

On Beauty as well.

Bob Jackson:

Yeah. Yeah. But would I yield if my arm was right up my back and I was scratching my own head? Would I yield?

James Walton:

Interesting image.

Bob Jackson:

Yes. There you go. I like to paint these pictures, James. Would I yield 1985 with The Bone People and Illywhacker? A great-

James Walton:

Can I just say, Illywhacker, everyone says roister and romp. Bored me rigid.

Bob Jackson:

Did it?

James Walton:

Really did. And I read it in Australia. It was one of these things where I was a big fan of you read a book where it’s set. It’s such a thing to do. So I was going to Australia. I thought, I’m going to take Illywhacker, everyone says it’s fantastic, romps along. God, just absolutely-

Bob Jackson:

Did it, really?

James Walton:

Yeah, quite a lot of pictures of me on that holiday, I think, with it sort of across my face, I’m sleeping. And The Bone People, I haven’t read, but I can’t say I love the sound of.

Jo Hamya:

We really need to come to a decision, guys.

James Walton:

I’m not-

Jo Hamya:

It’s time sensitive.

Bob Jackson:

Just to clarify here, you, Jo, would go with ‘05, would you?

Jo Hamya:

I would go with ‘05 with ‘89 as a runner up.

Bob Jackson:

And you obviously would go with ‘05?

James Walton:

I think ‘05. So I think that win… I think we can-

Jo Hamya:

So we believe Bob.

James Walton:

Bob has actually read all the books as well. But how about we suggest that from our careful analysis of all the best shortlist, that we pronounce 1980s the best decade, but the best single year, 2005?

Bob Jackson:

How elegant is that as a solution? Well done. Agreed.

James Walton:

So after that classic Booker… No, compromise would be too fair, thrashing it out in a fair way, we are left with the 1980s definitely being the best decade. But the best single year being 2005, for John Banville, The Sea, Julian Barnes, Arthur & George. Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. Ali Smith, The Accidental and Zadie Smith, On Beauty. I must say, when you do read this out, it does sound pretty strong.

Bob Jackson:

I’m coming towards the conclusion that you’re right. Perfect.

Jo Hamya:

I wonder if this is how the judges feel.

James Walton:

There’ll be one… Yes, you’ll be the Rabbi Julia Neuberger, will you? Going, “It’s an absolute disgrace. That book, that’s crap, that shortlist.”Bob Jackson:

It was the word she used.

James Walton:

Yeah, it was.

Bob Jackson:

I didn’t want to say it.

James Walton:

No, indeed.

Bob Jackson:

Now you have.

James Walton:

Sorry. But there we are. So there we have our answer to the best ever Booker shortlist, just about. But we recommend all those years as well.

Bob Jackson:

Yes, indeed.

James Walton:

Thanks enormously to Bob.

Bob Jackson:

It’s been my pleasure. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Jo Hamya:

Thank you.

James Walton:

It’s really been great to have you, Bob. Thanks so much.

Jo Hamya:

So 2005. And if you agree with that or indeed disagree with that, there is a poll on our website where you can vote on your favourite shortlist ever at thebookerprizes.com/best-shortlist.

James Walton:

Also, we’ve recently launched a Booker Prize book club on Facebook, so to find out more about that, head to facebook.com/thebookerprizes.

Jo Hamya:

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to follow us to catch our two special episodes in which we’ll take you through all six shortlisted books for 2023 in October.

James Walton:

You can find out more about this year’s shortlist at thebookerprizes.com, and remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Substack @theBookerPrizes. Until next time, goodbye.

Jo Hamya:

Bye.

James Walton:

The Booker Prize Podcast is hosted by Jo Hamya and me, James Walton. It’s produced and edited by Kevin Meolo and the executive producer is John Davenport. It’s a Daddy’s SuperYacht production for the Booker Prizes.