When the Booker prize was first launched in 1969, its aim was to get more people reading and to stimulate discussion about contemporary literature. Now, we all know reading is at an all time low but there really has never been a better time to reignite your love of fiction and to discover (or rediscover) your love of reading. And, this year’s shortlist is really a testament to the breadth of stories available out there.

There’s poetic historic fiction with May we Feed the King about a reluctant medieval king from Rebecca Perry. For lovers of science fiction, M. John Harrison has written a tale about aliens and social collapse set on the Kentish coast. And, there’s laughter to be found in Black Bag by Luke Kennard about an out-of-work actor who lands a gig in a psychological experiment.

There are also new works by previous winners and nominees. Marlon James is back with a startling portrait of the lives of gay men in Jamaica. Douglas Stuart gives us his chilly Hebridean family drama, John of John. And, finally there’s the gentle political commentary of Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say about what happens when good people stay quiet.

Ahead of the prize being announced on November 9, we’ve asked six experts to guide you through the nominations for 2026.

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

Black Bag was inspired by a 1967 experiment at Oregon State University in which an individual cloaked in black sat mutely in a seminar for a semester. Where the study focused on the reactions of the witnesses, Black Bag is the story and meditations of the man who becomes increasingly attached to his role and, amusingly, his bag.

Kennard’s protagonist is a flat-broke actor relying on cash-in-hand corporate murder mysteries and the kindness of his friend Claudio in an otherwise dismal world. Wearing the bag outside of the classroom not only removes the problem of how to be but even attracts the attention of a female professor who wants “to fuck nothing” – he is both strikingly visible and anonymous. The novel is laugh-out-loud funny but melancholy and provocative too. Some of Bag’s strongest relationships are those he imagines, like ongoing........

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