{"id":416340,"date":"2026-07-29T08:34:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T08:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416340\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T08:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T08:34:32","slug":"marlon-james-and-douglas-stuart-are-among-booker-semifinalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/416340\/","title":{"rendered":"Marlon James and Douglas Stuart are among Booker semifinalists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Booker Prize winners Marlon James<\/a> and Douglas Stuart are in the running again for the prestigious fiction award, alongside Dublin gangs, dystopian science fiction and the New England characters of Pulitzer Prize laureate Elizabeth Strout.<\/p>\n

Judges read 163 novels to come up with the 13 semifinalists announced Tuesday for the $66,000 Booker Prize, a list described by historian Mary Beard, head of the judging panel, as literary \u201cdynamite.\u201d<\/p>\n

The list includes James\u2019 \u201cThe Disappearers,\u201d about a group of gay men in a hostile 1980s Jamaica; Stuart\u2019s \u201c John of John,\u201d a story of father-son secrets on a remote Scottish island; and Strout\u2019s heartfelt small-town tale \u201cThe Things We Never Say.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"Author <\/p>\n

Marlon James is semifinalist for the 2026 Booker Prize for fiction. In 2015, he became the first Jamaican writer to win the prestigious literary award.<\/p>\n

(Neil Hall \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

James won the Booker in 2015 for \u201cA Brief History of Seven Killings,\u201d and Stuart won in 2020 for \u201cShuggie Bain.\u201d<\/a> Strout\u2019s \u201cOh William!\u201d was a finalist in 2022. She won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009 for \u201cOlive Kitteridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

They sit alongside lesser-known names on a Booker longlist that includes authors with roots in Britain, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Turkey and the United States.<\/p>\n

Three of those on the list are debut authors: Turkish American writer Kenan Orhan for the family history saga \u201cThe Renovation,\u201d British author Rebecca Perry for the Medieval-to-modern tale \u201cMay We Feed the King\u201d and Ireland\u2019s Djamel White for \u201cAll Them Dogs,\u201d a thriller set in the Dublin underworld.<\/p>\n

White, at 28, is the youngest author in the running. The oldest is 81-year-old M. John Harrison, whose postapocalyptic tale \u201cThe End of Everything\u201d is a rare science fiction novel to make the Booker list.<\/p>\n

The other contenders are \u201cThe Shadow of the Object\u201d by Chloe Aridjis, \u201cBlack Bag\u201d by Luke Kennard, \u201cThe Vivisectors\u201d by Missouri Williams, \u201cSwitzy\u201d by Emma Cline, \u201cHelen of Nowhere\u201d by Makenna Goodman and Gwendoline Riley\u2019s \u201cThe Palm House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beard said the five jurors, who include Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and American novelist Patricia Lockwood, tried to look beyond the idea of a typical Booker winner \u2014 \u201cslightly serious, about to be classic.\u201d Instead, they chose novels that are \u201ctrying to expand the boundaries of how we can think about ourselves in completely different ways,\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes they\u2019re using humor, sometimes it\u2019s pathos, sometimes there\u2019s shock value,\u201d Beard said. \u201cThey\u2019re risk-takers. They are dynamite. They say, \u2018Come on, try seeing it a different way.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pulitzer <\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is a semifinalist for the Booker Prize for fiction for her novel, \u201cThe Things We Never Say.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Leonardo Cendamo)<\/p>\n

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize has a reputation for transforming writers\u2019 careers and is open to novels from any country published in the U.K. and Ireland. Last year\u2019s winner was \u201cFlesh\u201d by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The judges will announce six finalists on Sept. 22, and the winner will be revealed Nov. 9 at a ceremony in London.<\/p>\n

Lawless writes for the Associated Press. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart are in the running again for the prestigious fiction award,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5661,40864,166529,166532,138968,72727,49811,39406,16047,48,52,51,3164,47,50,49,166530,24261,8711,166531,218],"class_list":["post-416340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-author","tag-beard","tag-booker-prize-longlist","tag-booker-semifinalist","tag-douglas-stuart","tag-finalist","tag-ireland","tag-john","tag-judge","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-list","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-marlon-james","tag-novel","tag-running","tag-strout","tag-winner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}