Explore the 2022 Booker Prize Longlist
The announcement of the Booker Prize Longlist is always a mid-summer literary treat. This year 13 selections made it to the longlist which honors books written in English and published in the UK. Writer, broadcaster, and cultural historian Neil MacGregor, chairing the judging panel, says "The list offers story, fable and parable, fantasy, mystery, meditation and thriller." In other words—something for every kind of reader. The judges noted that the longlist includes the youngest (Leila Mottley) and oldest (Alan Garner) authors ever to be nominated and features three debut novelists.
Considered one of the most prestigious book awards, the shortlist will be announced on September 6 and the winner unveiled on October 17. That gives you plenty of time to get a few of these fantastic reads under your belt:
Glory
by NoViolet Bulawayo
Glory centers around the unexpected fall of Old Horse, a long-serving leader of a fictional African country, and the drama that follows for an unruly nation of animals on the path to true liberation.
Trust
by Hernan Diaz
Told from the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction, this novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception is centered around the mystery of how the Rask family acquired their immense fortune in 1920s-1930’s New York City.
The Trees
by Percival Everett
After a series of brutal murders in a rural Mississippi town, investigators arrive and discover a large number of similar cases that all have roots in the past.
Booth
by Karen Joy Fowler
Describes the multiple scandals, family triumphs and disasters that took their toll on the 10 children of celebrated Shakespearean actor Junius Booth as the North and the South reached a boiling point and the Civil War broke out.
Treacle Walker
by Alan Garner
When Treacle Walker appears off the Cheshire moor one day—a wanderer, a healer—an unlikely friendship is forged and the young boy is introduced to a world he could never have imagined
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
by Shehan Karunatilaka
A searing satire set amid the murderous mayhem of Sri Lanka beset by civil war.
Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan
In a small Irish town in 1985, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong, while delivering an order to the local convent, makes a discovery that forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
Case Study
by Graeme Macrae Burnet
When a young woman becomes convinced that her sister's therapist was responsible for her suicide, she assumes an alter ego and presents herself as a client at his clinic, determined to get to the bottom of the charismatic therapist's relationship with her sister.
The Colony
by Audrey Magee
In 1979, as violence erupts all over Ireland, two outsiders travel to a small island off the west coast in search of their own answers, despite what it may cost the islanders.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
by Maddie Mortimer
When a sudden diagnosis threatens to derail each of their lives, Lia, her husband Harry, and their beloved daughter, Iris, find the past colliding with the present as the world around them begins to transform, centering around the shifting landscape of Lia’s body.
Nightcrawling
by Leila Mottley
When a drunken altercation with a stranger turns into a job she desperately needs, Kiara, who supports her brother and an abandoned 9-year-old boy, starts nightcrawling until her name surfaces in an investigation exposing her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
After Sappho
by Selby Wynn Schwartz
Inspired by the muse Sappho, a myriad of women break from their small, predetermined lives for seemingly disparate paths.
Not yet in NYPL's collection—US release date January 24, 2023
Oh William!
by Elizabeth Strout
Writer Lucy Barton recounts her complex, tender relationship with William, her first husband, and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.