A panel of judges has whittled down the longlist of 13 books that were nominated for The Booker Prize 2022 to the final shortlist of six novels.
Booker Prize judges chair Neil MacGregor announced the shortlist live from the Serpentine Pavilion in London and remarked that judges are “completely free to set their own criteria” but that they were looking for authors who "created a world, an imagined world that we can feel as our own."
Commenting on the final six books that were shortlisted, he said: "something momentous happens to an individual or to society. They realise what they are and what they can become." They were also "not too long," showing "great editing," he joked.
The other judges were academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari, historian Helen Castor, novelist and critic M. John Harrison, and novelist, poet, and professor Alain Mabanckou.
The six shortlisted titles are:
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
This novel is set in a fictional country of animals ruled by a tyrant on the verge of liberation. It tells the story of an uprising through a vivid chorus of animal voices, that help us see our human world more clearly. The judges remarked that the book “becomes almost reality as we picture the parallel between this Animal Farm, Zimbabwe, and the fate of many African nations. An ingenious and brilliant political fable that bears witness to the surreal turns of history.”
NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Zimbabwean author Elizabeth Zandele Tshele, a Stegner fellow at Standford University. Her debut novel, We Need New Names was also shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, making her the first black African woman to appear on the list twice.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Published by Faber, this novel is set in 1985 in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising to meet him – and encounters the complicit silences of a small community controlled by the Church.
Despite being 116 pages, the shortest book ever to be shortlisted, Keegan’s Small Things Like These went through around 50 drafts to get it to its final, published state. The judges commented that it is a “a story of quiet bravery, set in an Irish community in denial of its central secret. Beautiful, clear, economic writing and an elegant structure dense with moral themes.”
The Trees by Percival Everett
According to the judges, The Tree is an “eerie, provocative, blackly comic Southern noir. A page-turner with a sharp, provocative edge, as it harks back to the real-life murder of the young Emmett Till, it has important things to say about race.”
The novel revolves around a series of brutal murders that have taken place in Money, Mississippi. As the case begins to unravel, the investigating detectives discover similar murders are taking place all over the country.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Considered one of Sri Lanka’s foremost authors, Shehan Karunatilaka’s latest novel is set in Colombo in 1990 and centers Maali Almeida, who wakes up dead in what seems to be a celestial vista office. His dismembered body is sinking in the Beira Lake, and he has no idea who killed him.
The judges comment on the novel were, “an afterlife noir, with nods to Dante and Buddha and yet unpretentious. Fizzes with energy, imagery, and ideas against a broad, surreal vision of the Sri Lankan civil wars. Slyly, angrily comic.”
Oh William! By Elizabeth Strout
Oh William! is the third book in the Lucy Barton saga and follows the beloved heroine in a luminous novel about love, loss and deep hidden family secrets that erupts and bewilders.
“No-one writes interior life as Strout does. This is meticulous observed writing, full of probing psychological insight. Lucy Barton is one of literature’s immortal characters – brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and most of all, ordinary, like us all,” reads the judges comment on the Booker Prize site.
Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
Alan Garner was awarded the OBE in 2001 for his services to literature after a distinguished career as an author of children's fantasy novels and retellings of traditional British folktales. In
Treacle Walker, Alan Garner returns to his beloved hometown Cheshire and delivers a playful, moving, and evocative fable that fuses myth, folklore, and a profound exploration of the fluidity of time.
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In the longlist are: The Colony by Audrey Magee; After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz; Nightcrawling by Leila Motley; Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer; Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet; Trust by Hernan Diaz, and Booth by Karen Jay Fowler.
The long and shortlists were selected from 169 novels published between October 2021 to September 2022 and submitted by publishers. All the shortlisted authors receive £2,500 (about RM12,920) and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner will be announced on October 17, and will receive £50,000 (about RM258,400). – The Vibes, September 8, 2022
