Booker Prize 2020

Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain is a devastating and compassionate portrait of a boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow amid poverty, addiction, and neglect. At its heart is Shuggie’s fierce love for his mother, Agnes, whose alcoholism shapes the rhythms of their lives. Stuart writes with lyrical intensity, finding moments of tenderness within bleak circumstances. The novel explores masculinity, queerness, and class with unflinching honesty. Despite its darkness, the book pulses with empathy and resilience. It is a powerful debut that lingers long after the final page.

Hilary Mantel concludes her Thomas Cromwell trilogy with a masterful exploration of power and downfall. The Mirror & the Light traces Cromwell’s final years at the height of Henry VIII’s court. Mantel’s prose is controlled and psychologically rich, rendering political manoeuvre as intimate drama. The novel examines loyalty, ambition, and the price of proximity to power. History feels immediate and volatile. A monumental achievement in historical fiction.

Apeirogon tells the true-inspired story of two fathers — one Israeli, one Palestinian — united by grief. Structured as hundreds of brief fragments, the novel mirrors the complexity of conflict and memory. McCann weaves history, politics, and personal loss into a deeply humane tapestry. The book resists simplification, insisting on empathy over ideology. Its formal ambition serves its moral purpose. It is moving, generous, and quietly radical.

Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness imagines a future ravaged by climate collapse, where a mother and daughter join a rewilding experiment. The novel blends dystopian speculation with ecological reflection and maternal devotion. Cook explores the cost of survival, the meaning of freedom, and the limits of human intervention. Her prose is spare yet evocative, attentive to landscape and moral ambiguity. The book questions whether returning to nature is an act of hope or denial. It is haunting, urgent, and quietly unsettling.

Real Life follows Wallace, a Black queer graduate student navigating a toxic academic environment and fragile friendships over the course of a single weekend. Brandon Taylor’s prose is precise and emotionally restrained, capturing microaggressions, power imbalances, and quiet humiliations. The novel examines who is allowed vulnerability and who must remain guarded. Beneath its calm surface lies deep pain and longing. Taylor exposes how institutions reproduce harm while appearing neutral. It is a sharp, intimate study of alienation and survival.

Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body continues the story of Tambudzai, now an adult navigating postcolonial Zimbabwe. Written largely in the second person, the novel confronts self-loathing, ambition, and systemic failure with brutal honesty. Dangarembga refuses easy sympathy, instead offering a searing critique of neoliberalism and internalised oppression. The narrative is uncomfortable, confrontational, and deeply political. It challenges readers to examine complicity as well as suffering. A fierce and uncompromising novel.

Gabriel Krauze’s Who They Was is a raw, semi-autobiographical novel about gang life in London. Written in visceral, unfiltered prose, it captures violence, loyalty, and the search for meaning. The narrator oscillates between brutality and philosophical reflection, refusing moral simplification. Krauze exposes the social conditions that shape criminal worlds without romanticising them. The book is challenging, disturbing, and formally daring. It confronts readers with lives rarely granted complexity.

Burnt Sugar explores a toxic, entangled relationship between a daughter and her manipulative mother in India. Avni Doshi’s writing is sharp, unsettling, and psychologically precise. As the mother’s memory begins to fail, old resentments surface in disturbing ways. The novel interrogates motherhood, inheritance, and the desire for autonomy. Its narrator is unreliable, forcing readers to question truth and cruelty. It is a dark, compulsive read that lingers uneasily.

Kiley Reid’s debut explores race, privilege, and performative allyship through a seemingly small incident at a supermarket. The novel’s tone is sharp and readable, gradually exposing deeper discomforts beneath polite liberalism. Reid excels at dialogue and social observation, capturing awkwardness and self-deception. The characters are flawed, recognisable, and often infuriating. The book critiques systems without losing its humour. It is incisive, contemporary, and highly engaging.

Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King reimagines Ethiopia’s resistance to Italian invasion during World War II. Centering women soldiers long erased from history, the novel challenges colonial narratives of heroism and power. Mengiste’s prose is lyrical and cinematic, blending myth, memory, and violence. The book examines leadership, sacrifice, and the cost of war. Its structure mirrors the fragmentation of history itself. A bold, necessary reclamation of silenced voices.

Set during the American Gold Rush, C. Pam Zhang’s novel reimagines the Western through the eyes of Chinese American siblings. Zhang blends myth, history, and lyricism to challenge exclusionary national narratives. The book explores migration, inheritance, and the search for belonging. Its language is bold and poetic, reshaping familiar landscapes. The novel insists on who gets to be part of history. A striking, original debut.

Anne Tyler’s compact novel follows Micah Mortimer, a man devoted to order whose life is quietly upended. Tyler’s prose is restrained and observant, finding drama in small disruptions. The book explores loneliness, routine, and emotional avoidance. Beneath its gentle surface lies a critique of detachment and self-protection. Tyler’s compassion for her characters remains unwavering. A subtle, thoughtful portrait of late-life reckoning.

Sophie Ward’s novel blends philosophy and fiction to explore love, identity, and ethical choice. Structured as interconnected thought experiments, the book plays with perspective and narrative possibility. Ward asks how we love, why we stay, and what we owe each other. The novel is intellectually playful yet emotionally grounded. It challenges conventional storytelling while remaining accessible. A clever, questioning exploration of modern relationships.