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Not long to go now until the Olympics of English-language literature, the announcement of the Booker Prize winner on November 12. The winner will receive £50,000 ($97,000), a trophy named Iris (after Iris Murdoch) and perhaps most importantly, can expect their career to be transformed.
Notable aspects of this year’s shortlist? Five of the six books are by women; three authors have been nominated before, and two shortlisted before; there’s one debut novel (The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch author nominated); and if there’s one single theme they all share, the judges say, it’s “the gravitational forces exerted on us by the places we call home”.
Percival Everett is hotly tipped to win this year’s Booker Prize for his novel JamesCredit: Getty
Naturally, I’m gunning for Charlotte Wood, who calls Australia home, and is the first Australian in 10 years to reach the shortlist. This is not entirely for patriotic reasons: I reckon Stone Yard Devotional, the tale of a non-religious woman who seeks refuge in a community of nuns, is a gem of a novel, a seemingly quiet story with a disturbing power, and I endorse the judges’ verdict: “It’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.”
However, so far, I’ve read only two novels on the shortlist, so I can’t do comparisons (the other one I’ve read, Canadian writer Anne Michaels’ slim volume Held, is also a superbly written gem, though a little less accessible to the average reader).
The bookies’ favourite is James, a tour-de-force from American writer Percival Everett: a reimagining of Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the point of view of Jim the runaway slave. If Booker means big books about topical issues, this novel will win.
The other books? Orbital by Samantha Harvey and Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.
Charlotte Wood has been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.Credit: Henry Simmons
As many of us can recall, the Booker has weathered plenty of attacks over the years. Critics have accused it of being elitist and irrelevant, “pale, male and stale” (definitely not true this year). Some were horrified by the 2014 decision to open the award to US writers, but the Americans haven’t taken over, as feared. However, the hardest task continues to be walking the tightrope between literary kudos and popular acclaim, with varying success.
Gaby Wood, a writer, former judge and chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, has posted a revealing essay on the Booker website about how the judges are chosen and how they arrive at their decisions.