Booker Prize 2017

Set over a single night in a cemetery, Saunders’ novel blends historical fact with ghostly voices. Abraham Lincoln mourns his young son amid a chorus of the dead. The form is playful, fragmented, and deeply moving. Grief becomes communal and strange. Humour and sorrow coexist. A daring, compassionate experiment in narrative.

Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1 follows four parallel versions of one life, shaped by chance and circumstance. Through Archie Ferguson’s multiple trajectories, Auster explores identity, politics, love, and the American twentieth century. The novel is expansive and reflective, tracing how small divergences lead to radically different outcomes. Auster’s prose is assured and nostalgic, attentive to cultural detail. The book invites readers to consider fate, choice, and the stories we tell ourselves. A sweeping meditation on possibility.

Whitehead transforms the historical Underground Railroad into a literal subterranean train, using speculative invention to intensify historical truth. The novel follows Cora, an enslaved girl fleeing a Georgia plantation, as each state reveals a different face of American brutality. Whitehead’s prose is controlled and often eerily calm, letting horror land with maximum force. The episodic structure works like a grim tour of national mythmaking, showing how racism adapts to different local logics. Cora is rendered with fierce interiority; she is not a symbol but a person making impossible choices. The book balances suspense with philosophical weight, never letting the reader relax. Whitehead is also a master of tonal shifts, moving from realism to allegory without breaking the spell. The result is both page-turner and indictment. It’s a novel that expands what historical fiction can do. By the end, the journey feels both specific and national, a map of terror and survival. A brilliant, devastating work of imagination in service of truth.

Exit West uses elements of magical realism to explore migration and displacement. Doors appear that transport refugees instantly across borders. Hamid focuses on love amid uncertainty rather than spectacle. The prose is calm and compassionate. Global crisis is rendered through intimate moments. A humane, imaginative response to a defining issue of our time.

Fiona Mozley’s Elmet is a dark, lyrical novel set in rural Yorkshire. It tells the story of a father and his children living outside the law, resisting landowners and authority. Mozley’s prose is rich and elemental, steeped in landscape. The novel examines power, masculinity, and inheritance. Violence simmers beneath the pastoral surface. It is both mythic and political, intimate and stark.

Sebastian Barry’s novel follows two Irish immigrants fighting in the American Civil War and Indian Wars. Written in a tender, lyrical voice, the book explores love, violence, and survival. Barry humanises soldiers often erased from history, particularly queer men. The prose is intimate and poetic, softening brutality without denying it. The novel is both epic and deeply personal. A moving meditation on endurance and devotion.

Ali Smith’s Autumn is a formally playful, responsive novel written in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Blending memory, art, and political reflection, the book captures a nation in flux. Smith moves fluidly between generations and ideas, privileging connection over certainty. Her language is inventive and alive. The novel asks how to live with openness in divisive times. It is timely, humane, and quietly defiant.

A modern retelling of Antigone, this novel explores family loyalty and political extremism in contemporary Britain. Shamsie balances intimate emotion with public consequence. The narrative shifts between perspectives, deepening moral complexity. Love collides with ideology. The story unfolds with tragic inevitability. A powerful examination of belonging and justice.

Set in rural Minnesota, this novel follows a teenage girl entangled in a family’s dark secrets. Fridlund creates an atmosphere of unease and isolation. Moral responsibility is constantly deferred and distorted. Nature is watchful and indifferent. The narrative withholds judgment, forcing the reader to sit with discomfort. A tense, unsettling debut.

Solar Bones unfolds as a single, flowing sentence reflecting on one man’s life in Ireland. Through memories of family, work, and faith, the novel captures the rhythms of ordinary existence. McCormack explores masculinity, civic responsibility, and mortality. The novel’s formal constraint deepens its emotional impact. It celebrates the fragile structures that hold lives together. Quietly profound and beautifully controlled.

This novel traces the life of a village after the disappearance of a teenage girl. McGregor avoids sensationalism, focusing instead on communal rhythms and passing time. Nature cycles on, indifferent to human tragedy. Grief disperses rather than resolves. The prose is restrained and observant. A quietly radical approach to loss.

Arundhati Roy’s sprawling novel moves across decades and geographies in India, weaving together marginalised lives. The book blends realism with fable, rage with tenderness. Roy confronts caste, nationalism, violence, and love without restraint. The narrative resists linearity, mirroring the chaos it depicts. At its core is a belief in radical compassion. An ambitious, unruly, and deeply political novel.

Swing Time follows two girls bonded by a love of dance and divided by class and opportunity. Zadie Smith explores friendship, ambition, and cultural appropriation across continents. Her prose is agile and observant, rich with social insight. The novel examines how power operates within intimacy. Smith balances humour with critique. A nuanced exploration of identity in a globalised world.