Previous winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart shortlisted for Booker prize

The two authors are in the running for the £50,000 award alongside a Pulitzer winner, a science fiction legend, a comic writer and a debut novelist • Booker judge Mary Beard on this year’s shortlist This year’s Booker prize shortlist features some very familiar names – previous winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart are in the running once more, along with Pulitzer winner Elizabeth Strout and prominent British speculative fiction writer M John Harrison.

Novelist and poet Luke Kennard and debut novelist Rebecca Perry are also in contention for the £50,000 prize, the winner of which will be announced on Monday 9 November.

James, the Jamaican writer who took home the prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, was shortlisted this time for The Disappearers.

Set in Aids-era Jamaica, the novel centres around an attack on a group of queer men rehearsing John Herbert’s prison-set play Fortune and Men’s Eyes. Coming in at 640 pages, it’s the longest on the list.

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