By Collection Management Librarian Kathy
The UK’s most prestigious literary award, The Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. Check out the longlist titles below—featuring all of the titles currently or soon to be available in the U.S.—and look for the shortlist announced in September and the winner in November.
The longlist
The South by Tash Aw
Try it, if you liked: Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman, Swift River by Essie Chambers, or The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Description: When his grandfather dies, Jay travels south with his family to the property they've inherited, a once-flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. Jay's father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the son of the farm's manager, different from him in every way except for one. Out in the fields and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members begin to confront their own secrets and regrets. Jack is a professor at a struggling local college whose failures might have begun when he married his student, Sui Ching. Sui Ching does her best to keep the family together, though she, too, wonders what her life could have been. And Fong, the manager, refuses to look at what is: at Chuan, at the land, at the global forces that threaten to render his whole life obsolete.
Universality by Natasha Brown
Try it, if you liked: Trust by Hernan Diaz, Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, or Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Description: Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar. An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers, namely: Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true?
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Try it, if you liked: Maame by Jessica George, Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven, or Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Description: One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He's carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is 10 years old. Louisa is the only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne's illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.
The Loneliness of Sonia & Sunny by Kiran Desai
Try it, if you liked: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, or The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Description: In the snowy mountains of Vermont, Sonia is lonely. A college student and aspiring writer homesick for India, she turns to an older artist for inspiration and intimacy, a man who will cast a dark spell on the next many years of her life. In Brooklyn, Sunny is lonely, too. A struggling journalist originally from Delhi, he is both beguiled and perplexed by his American girlfriend and the country in which he plans to find his future. Back in India, Sonia and Sunny's extended families cannot fathom how anyone could be lonely in this great, bustling world. They arrange a meeting between the two—a clumsy meddling that only drives Sonia and Sunny apart before they have a chance to fall in love.
Audition by Katie Kitamura
Try it, if you liked: Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, Outline by Rachel Cusk, Fates & Furies by Lauren Groff
Description: Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? Two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day—partner, parent, creator, muse—and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Endling by Maria Reva
Try it, if you liked: Tremor by Teju Cole or Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Description: Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail.
Flesh by David Szalay
Try it, if you liked: If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, or Lessons by Ian McEwan
Description: Fifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour—a married woman close to his mother's age—as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvan himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the 21st century's tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London's super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status, and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
Try it, if you liked: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker, or The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
Description: In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband's cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients' struggles: Alfred's nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan. As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardizing the nameless narrator's marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not.
About Kathy
Kathy is a Collection Management Librarian who loves reading, sharing, and talking about books. Her missions in life are to create communities of readers, convince folks that her official title should be "Book Pusher," and refute that "disco" is a dirty word.