Black Bag by Luke Kennard has been shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize

Huge congratulations to Luke Kennard on being shortlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize for his brilliant novel, Black Bag (John Murray). The judges called Black Bag a “wonderfully quirky campus novel” combining an absurd experiment with “a moving story about human frailty, passion, confusion and identity”.
 

The other shortlistees are The End of Everything by Harrison (Serpent’s Tail), The Disappearers by James (Hamish Hamilton), May We Feed the King by Perry (Granta), The Things We Never Say by Strout (Viking) and John of John by Stuart (Picador). The six books were selected from a longlist of 13, itself drawn from 163 submissions. This year’s judging panel is chaired by classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard, alongside poet Raymond Antrobus, musician and writer Jarvis Cocker, journalist and critic Rebecca Liu and novelist and poet Patricia Lockwood. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London on 9th November.