Skip to content

Booker Prize 2023: The Bee Sting and Western Lane make short list

Booker Prize Foundation The Booker shortlisted novels 2023 piled upBooker Prize Foundation
The 13-strong long list was whittled down to a short list of six

The novels that will compete for this year's Booker Prize have been revealed, with all six of the authors short-listed for the first time.

All the short-listed authors receive £2,500. One is from the UK, two from Ireland, two from the US and one from Canada.

The books "showcase the breadth of what world literature can do", Esi Edugyan, who chairs the judging panel, said.

The winner, announced on 26 November, will receive £50,000.

The prestigious prize is open to works of fiction written in English by authors anywhere in the world and published in the UK or Ireland.

The shortlist in full:

  • Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (UK)
  • Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Ireland)
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Ireland)
  • Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Canada)
  • If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (US)
  • This Other Eden by Paul Harding (US)

The Bee Sting follows an Irish family in crisis, while Prophet Song, also set in Ireland, examines a mother of four who faces a terrible choice.

Study For Obedience sees a woman drop everything to be with her elder brother following the collapse of his marriage, while This Other Eden is a tale of racism on an isolated island off the coast of Maine.

Western Lane explores an immigrant father's attempts to raise his family as a single parent, while If I Survive You is a collection of linked stories focused on one family's tempest-tossed journeys in Jamaica and Florida.

'Relentless truth-telling'

Twice-short-listed novelist Edugyan is joined on the panel by actress and writer Adjoa Andoh, poet, lecturer, editor and critic Mary Jean Chan, author and professor James Shapiro and actor and writer Robert Webb.

Edugyan said: "The best novels invoke a sense of timelessness even while saying something about how we live now. Our six finalists are marvels of form.

"All are fuelled by a kind of relentless truth-telling, even when that honesty forces us to confront dark acts. And yet however long we may pause in the shadows, humour, decency and grace are never far from hand."

The judges chose the final six from 13 long-listed titles - known as the Booker dozen - which were selected from 163 published between October 2022 and September 2023.

Last year's prize was won by Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.