Watch leading performers read extracts from the Booker Prize 2022 shortlist

The story so far: Lucy Barton is a successful writer and recent widow living in New York. She recalls the moments she feared her first husband, William, would leave her - and how the breakdown of her marriage affected her daughter’s health.

Watch two readings from ‘Oh William!’ below.
 

The story so far: Jim and Ed, two Black detectives, are investigating a series of strange murders in Money, Mississippi, which have attracted the attention of the FBI. They also meet Mama Z, a local centenarian who has been compiling records of every lynching in the US.

Watch two readings from ‘The Trees’ below.

The story so far: In the bountiful land of Jidada, the animals lived quite happily. Then the colonisers arrived. A bloody War of Liberation brought new hope for the animals - along with a new leader: a charismatic horse. Years later, the now-aged horse, the Father of the Nation, addresses the masses, unaware that protest is brewing…

Watch two readings from ‘Glory’ below.

The story so far: It is Christmas, 1985, in a small Irish town. Bill Furlong, a coalman, visits the local convent with his delivery and is disturbed by an encounter with the girls from the convent’s training school.

Watch two readings from ‘Small Things Like These’ below.

The story so far: Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, a war photographer, has been killed. In the afterlife, he finds himself in what appears to be a chaotic visa office, while, in the real world, local detectives search for his remains.

Watch two readings from ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’ below.

The story so far: Joe Coppock, a solitary, partially-sighted child, forges a friendship with a mysterious wanderer, Treacle Walker, and encounters an ancient bog man named Thin Amren.

Watch two readings from ‘Treacle Walker’ below.