The six-strong shortlist for the 2023 Booker Prize was announced today at the National Portrait Gallery in London. 

None of the six authors has previously been shortlisted for the prize. There are two debuts on the shortlist; there is one British, one Canadian, two Irish and two American authors.

Although full of hope, humour and humanity, the books address many of 2023’s most pressing concerns: climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms.

They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future.

The Shortlist

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

A patch of ice on the road, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil – can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life?

Irresistibly funny, wise and thought-provoking, The Bee Sting is a tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo 

A beautiful and moving first novel about grief, sisterhood and a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

A mother faces a terrible choice, in Paul Lynch’s exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a society on the brink.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's spellbinding novel celebrates the hopes, dreams and resilience of those deemed not to fit in a world brutally intolerant of difference

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

An exhilarating novel-in-stories that pulses with style, heart and barbed humour, while unravelling what it means to carve out an existence between cultures, homes and pay cheques

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

In her accomplished and unsettling second novel, Sarah Bernstein explores themes of prejudice, abuse and guilt through the eyes of a singularly unreliable narrator

The judges are looking for the best work of long-form fiction, written in English, selected from entries published in the UK and Ireland between 1st October 2022 and 30th September 2023.

The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced at an event at Old Billingsgate, London, on 26th November 2023.

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