The Palm House and Black Bag longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley and Black Bag by Luke Kennard have been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize!
The longlist of 13 novels has been selected by the 2026 judging panel, chaired by celebrated classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard. Beard is joined by award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood.
Read what the judges said about The Palm House and Black Bag below:
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
"Most chilling story ever told: our literary magazine has got a new editor, and he’s coming in with some big ideas. A note-perfect portrait not only of certain rarefied London intellectual spaces, but also of the people that actually bring their own bloodstreams, histories, tastes, families, first loves, and lonelinesses to them, to make up that impersonal thing we think of as the Establishment. Who, in these places, has power, and how is that power wielded? Are we fated never to get a word in, to remain always a little hungry, a little thirsty – and did we really choose this path because we love literature? Told in a series of thrown spotlights, in some of the best dialogue this side of Henry Green, The Palm House is minimalist, precise, and indelible."
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
"How does an aspiring actor survive in contemporary London, where monthly living costs can rise well over a thousand pounds? The obvious solution – be born rich – has eluded Black Bag’s protagonist, a 37-year-old man who cobbles together an artistically and financially unsatisfying life performing in productions that stretch and undermine the meaning of theatre. That is until he gets a job showing up to student psychology lectures dressed in a black bag. Luke Kennard’s of-the-moment satire considers anonymity and disgust, the online rackets of cryptocurrency and energy drinks, and what it means to find love in our unstable times. There’ll be a lot of discussion about what the novel has to say about the state of modern masculinity (fractious; confused) – we also admired its sharply crafted sentences, memorable sex scenes, and humour."