This Booker longlist may have two previous winners, but it’s keen to experiment

Marlon James, Douglas Stuart and Elizabeth Strout are names we know, but there’s a welcome element of surprise elsewhere Previous winners Douglas Stuart and Marlon James lead Booker prize longlist This year’s Booker longlist is led by two previous winners.

Twelve years on from A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James returns to Jamaica in The Disappearers , out in September: a polyphonic epic of a murderous mob attack on a gay theatre group in 1988 Kingston, and the two-decade aftermath of trauma and revenge that follows.

A brutal expose of Jamaica’s homophobia, it’s also an energetic portrait of queer culture and the Caribbean diaspora.

Douglas Stuart, whose debut Shuggie Bain won in 2020, is included for John of John , in which a young gay man returns to his childhood home on the Hebridean island of Harris, where his devout father is also hiding his sexuality.

Both novels open up territory not often trod in literature, with Stuart illuminating faith, repression and the fading traditions of the Scottish Hebrides. It’s no surprise either to see a third nomination for Elizabeth Strout.

The Things We Never Say introduces new characters to her fictional universe, in the story o

References

• Original
  This Booker longlist may have two previous winners, but it’s keen to experiment