Booker Prize 2017

George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo is a formally inventive novel set during a single night in a Washington graveyard. Blending historical fact with a chorus of ghostly voices, the book explores grief following the death of Abraham Lincoln’s young son. Saunders uses humour, fragmentation, and empathy to examine loss and moral responsibility. The voices overlap and interrupt, creating a sense of communal suffering. Beneath the experimental form lies deep tenderness. It is both playful and profoundly moving.

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.

Colson Whitehead’s novel reimagines the Underground Railroad as a literal subterranean network. Following Cora’s escape from slavery, the book moves through alternate versions of American history. Whitehead blends realism with allegory to confront racial terror and resistance. The prose is controlled and devastating. Each state becomes a moral experiment. A powerful reworking of the American historical novel.

Exit West uses elements of magical realism to tell a story of love and migration in a world of closing borders. Through mysterious doors that transport refugees across the globe, Hamid explores displacement with grace and restraint. The novel resists spectacle, focusing instead on emotional transitions. Hamid’s prose is spare and lyrical, marked by compassion. The book reimagines migration as both loss and transformation. A gentle yet powerful meditation on movement and belonging.

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.

Kamila Shamsie reworks Antigone in a contemporary British context, exploring citizenship, loyalty, and extremism. The novel centres on a British Muslim family torn apart by politics and ideology. Shamsie’s prose is clear and urgent, her characters vividly drawn. The book interrogates who belongs and who is excluded. Tragedy unfolds with classical inevitability. A timely and emotionally resonant novel.

Emily Fridlund’s debut is a tense, atmospheric novel set in the frozen landscapes of Minnesota. The story centres on a teenage girl drawn into the lives of a mysterious family with dangerous beliefs. Fridlund explores isolation, complicity, and moral failure with psychological precision. Her prose is restrained yet chilling, mirroring the coldness of the setting. The novel slowly reveals its stakes, building dread through understatement. A haunting and 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.

Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13 begins with the disappearance of a teenage girl but resists the conventions of crime fiction. Instead, it follows a village over thirteen years, observing cycles of life and loss. McGregor’s prose is patient and precise, attentive to nature and time. The absence at the centre never resolves, becoming part of the community’s fabric. The novel is quietly devastating. A study in endurance and attention.

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.