Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah and Flesh by David Szalay are the titles to put your money on for this year’s Booker longlist, according to critics: three of the four we spoke to suggested them as probable picks.
Set between Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Theft – Gurnah’s first novel since becoming Nobel laureate in 2021 – is a coming-of-age story following the intertwined lives of a trio of young people. Flesh, meanwhile, traces the story of one man, István, from teenagehood to midlife.
Audition by Katie Kitamura and Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser are also likely contenders, both independently put forward by two critics. (Audition is also one of Evie Wyld’s picks – read below why she loves it.)
Anthony Cummins – whose “long-range punt” that Samantha Harvey’s Orbital could win the 2024 Booker in an edition of this newsletter last summer turned out to be bang on – said that the “concept and style of Sarah Hall’s Helm (out on 28 July) make it a good shout not only for the longlist but the prize itself”.
Though Cummins notes he hasn’t yet read some forthcoming books by past winners and nominees who are eligible this year: Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, Amity by Nathan Harris, Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood and What We Can Know by Ian McEwan.
There’s a “decent chance” the forthcoming McEwan will be on the longlist, says critic Beejay Silcox. “I just finished reading it and it’s a big crowd pleaser, in the mode of AS Byatt’s Possession with a hint of Emily St John Mandel.” The novel, set nearly a century in the future in a UK partly submerged by rising seas, will be published in September.
Along with Theory & Practice, Cummins would “love to see” Wendy Erskine’s The Benefactors and John Patrick McHugh’s Fun and Games on the list. “I think Erskine will make the shortlist at least”, he adds. Other “solid bets” for the longlist are Claire Adam’s Love Forms, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count, and Susan Choi’s Flashlight along with Gurnah’s Theft.
Michael Donkor – a critic whose most recent novel is Grow Where They Fall – thinks Gurnah’s Theft and Alan Hollinghurst’s “stunning” book Our Evenings “will be leading the pack”.
Keiran Goddard – critic and author of, most recently, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning – has his fingers crossed for The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride, as well as for Flesh and Audition.
Asked for her predictions, Silcox said that she was “going to advocate hard and passionately for Aussie fiction”, which was ignored “scandalously” and “stupidly” by the prize for a decade until Charlotte Wood was shortlisted last year for Stone Yard Devotional. “And oh did she deserve to be there!”
Silcox would like to see Rapture by Emily Maguire (also one of Wyld’s picks below), Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko, Dusk by Robbie Arnott or De Kretser’s Theory & Practice on the list. “Aussie writing is alive, brilliant and form elastic, and so much more than tales of dead girls in the outback.”
What else can we expect? “Historically, of course, the longlist has also been a wonderful showcase for debut novelists,” says Donkor. “In this vein, it would be fantastic to see Issa Quincy’s Absence and Anthony Shapland’s A Room Above a Shop getting a nod.” Cummins added To Rest Our Minds and Bodies by Harriet Armstrong and Endling by Maria Reva into the mix of possible debuts.
And which publishers might break through? Fitzcarraldo Editions, “renowned for translated fiction, have never been nominated for the Booker despite publishing outstanding English-language novels,” says Cummins. “Maybe Jonathan Buckley’s One Boat will change that.”
Ultimately, “prize lists are mysterious things”, says Goddard; curveballs are to be expected. It’s in the hands of Sarah Jessica Parker and this year’s other judges: Roddy Doyle, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Chris Power and Kiley Reid. All is revealed on Tuesday. Let’s hope these critics approve.
David Szalay, author of Flesh. Photograph: Mirco Toniolo/AGF/Shutterstock
