Booker Prize 2021: Predictions, Choices and Priorities

This is the time of year again – the long list of 2021 Booker Prize will be announced on July 27th and I have made a list of predictions along with my personal preferences as to whether there may be strong options based on a select few books. I’ve read them over the last few months, as well as several that I haven’t done. As always, it is impossible to know which novels have been submitted. Last year, for the first time since I started writing these posts, my list of long list predictions was entered by winner Douglas Stuart Shuggie Bain, so my first prediction is that it is very difficult for me to repeat this trick for the second year in a row. .

The jury changes every year, but there has been a marked trend in the last long lists for more established authors, most of whom have been nominated in previous years. One of this year’s notable literary competitors is the dystopian work of science fiction Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro This is the eighth novel by the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who won the Booker Prize in 1989 for his work ‘The Remains of the Day’ and has been nominated three times. Second place went to Rachel Cusk It may be the first appearance on a long list since 2005, and it is about a woman who invites an artist to sleep at her house on the coast. Damon Galgutren Promise It is located in pre-apartheid South Africa and has a high chance of being the third nominee for Booker Prize.

Books that can be selected for this year’s long list must be published in the UK from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2021, which means that some titles have not yet appeared in bookstores. It’s a solid choice (and a personal preference even though I haven’t read it yet) Beautiful world, where you are in the hands of Sally Rooney will be published in September, three years after the Normal Person was listed in 2018. They will also be in September. A book of form and emptiness by Ruth OzekiAfter A Tale for the Time Being in 2013, and Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle In 2017 he joined the long list of ‘The Underground Railroad’.

Luckily, there should be room for some new faces on the long list as well. As for indie publishers, I would love to see a couple of Bluemoose titles Ronan Hession’s Panenka about a middle-aged man with mistakes made in the past and Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal a sensitive and non-judgmental portrait of the most marginalized groups in society.

Elsewhere, Sorrow and Bliss, by Meg Mason it has been well received by critics and readers alike for its original portrayal of the mental illness experience. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle It is an epic story of a woman aviator and a Hollywood actress portrayed sixty years later. I also like the sound of Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor about a very bad free Antarctic research trip.

Finally, it tends to coincide with the long list of the Fictional Women Award. No one is talking about this at the hands of Patricia Lockwood It is the first fragmented novel about the Internet and mourning, among other things, and Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller One could also meet 51-year-old twins living in rural isolation with their mother.

Which book would you like to see on the long list of Booker Prize winners this year?