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We asked the stars of the Booker Prize 2026 to reveal the novels they love most, with some surprising choices along the way!
From celebrated authors to famous faces, we caught up with Booker Prize winner M. John Harrison, fellow shortlisted writers Luke Kennard, Rebecca Perry, Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart to discover their literary favourites and hear more about their nominated novels.
Booker Prize judges Mary Beard, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu, Patricia Lockwood and Raymond Antrobus also shared their love of literature, alongside special guests Alfred Enoch, David Olusoga, Maisie Peters, Sir Tony Robinson and Jack Edwards.
Plus, we hear from M. John Harrison before his historic win for The End of Everything, which saw him become the oldest-ever Booker Prize winner at 81 after 60 years of writing. Report by Jonesl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
From celebrated authors to famous faces, we caught up with Booker Prize winner M. John Harrison, fellow shortlisted writers Luke Kennard, Rebecca Perry, Elizabeth Strout and Douglas Stuart to discover their literary favourites and hear more about their nominated novels.
Booker Prize judges Mary Beard, Jarvis Cocker, Rebecca Liu, Patricia Lockwood and Raymond Antrobus also shared their love of literature, alongside special guests Alfred Enoch, David Olusoga, Maisie Peters, Sir Tony Robinson and Jack Edwards.
Plus, we hear from M. John Harrison before his historic win for The End of Everything, which saw him become the oldest-ever Booker Prize winner at 81 after 60 years of writing. Report by Jonesl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00If you're going to pick up any classic novel and you can't pick yourself, what are you picking to read
00:04again?
00:06Oh, that's a really good question.
00:09Oh gosh.
00:10Oh, you know, it's about, I'm often accused of being very Dickensian.
00:14I would say that either it would be T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land or J.G. Ballard The Drought.
00:22It does change in terms of like canonical stuff, probably The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's novel, I think.
00:30Contemporary stuff.
00:31I just, I just love Kazuyo Shigeru's The Unconsoled.
00:35That's just one of my all-time favorites.
00:36It's like a kind of nightmare that you don't want to end.
00:39You know, one of my favorite books is Tessa the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.
00:42In terms of classics, I'm a Hardy man.
00:44And I love that, you know, the concerns about class and reputation and women trying to have a sense of
00:52independence,
00:53which were huge issues in the 1880s, 1890s, are still things we're worried about today.
00:57I don't love that, but I think that's the mark of a classic, when we're still like puzzling over those
01:03issues.
01:04I would pick up, do you know what, maybe like, maybe Pride and Prejudice.
01:10I haven't read it for so long, and I had to read it at school, and I would like to
01:16read it as an adult who's not studying it as a text,
01:20and just see what I think, because you don't really get the opportunity to think, like, I studied Jane Austen
01:24for so long,
01:25and I'd like to approach it as a reader and not as a student.
01:28I think I'm due for another reread of Anna Karenina.
01:32If you're going to pick up any novel and read it now again, what are you picking?
01:36I'm not reading any novels for the next two months, because I'm going to read some non-fiction, which I
01:43have sadly neglected.
01:44It was good for me to realise what was going on in contemporary fiction, because I tend to read older
01:50books,
01:51and so it's good to know a bit about what people are thinking about in the middle of the 2020s.
01:59And if you were going to have a book written about you, what would you like it to be called?
02:07I don't know, The Master. I don't know. Cock of the North.
02:13My favourite is always the most recent thing I've read, maybe, like everyone else in the world.
02:18So, I just read Partita by Barbara Kingsolver, and I loved it, and that was my favourite thing to pick
02:23up for a day, so I'm going to say that.
02:25I'm rereading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
02:28I'm discussing it with a writer at the Hay Festival in the winter, and I haven't read it for 30
02:35years, so I was rereading that again.
02:38A novel of just astonishing detail and kind of tiny little stories, a little microcosm of the past, so I'm
02:46enjoying reading that again.
02:47A favourite book? Maybe Don Quixote, The Cervantes.
02:53I love that book. It's extraordinary. The scale of it, the scope of it, the fact that someone in 1615
03:01put his characters in the real world, the real world in his book.
03:06You know, the second part of the book, he meets characters who have read the first part of the book.
03:09The imaginative leap of that. I mean, it's astonishing. Anyone who hasn't read it, it is very, very much worth
03:16the read.
03:16He's doing things that, you know, people don't take that kind of risk nowadays.
03:23Middlemarch, I think. Everything by George Eliot is so wonderful, but I think, in a way, we've got to shake
03:31off the ghost of all those glorious 19th century novels and rethink it, haven't we?
03:36Which is what the book is all about.
03:38Someone that hasn't really read many books, what do you suggest? Where do they start? Have you got one they
03:42can start with?
03:43I mean, the new Hunger Games book, I think, is a great place to start. Sunrise on the Reaping. It
03:48has all the magic of the first book in the series, and I think, you know, Suzanne Collins only writes
03:53when she has something to say.
03:54So, it's about, you know, it's tragic, but it's also hopeful. I think that's a really important book, both in
04:00terms of entertainment and it's political.
04:03It informs you and it inspires you, so Sunrise on the Reaping, I think, and read it before the film
04:08comes out.
04:08There you go. And what's your favourite book? Your favourite classic novel, maybe?
04:13Well, my favourite book from this year's Booker Shortlist, and, okay, my favourite book from the shortlist is The Disappearers
04:19by Marlon James.
04:20I thought it was incredible and feels like a modern classic, but John of John, also wonderful, The Things We
04:26Never Say, May We Feed the King, just, like, what a strong year for the Booker.
04:30And then on the long list, Switzy by Emma Klein. It didn't make it to the shortlist.
04:34I was like, we riot at dawn when I saw the shortlist announcement, because I felt like Switzy really deserved
04:39its spot.
04:41But, yeah, go back and read that one, too.
04:43All time, I'm going to say it's going to be something by James Baldwin or Toni Morrison or Clarice Le
04:48Spectre or Arundhati Roy or Shyam Salvadori.
04:51That's like my Mount Rushmore, right?
04:53Yeah.
04:54This isn't the problem when you ask someone who reads as many books as I do what's your favourite book
04:56of all time.
04:57It's like, you're going to get a list.
04:57Can you tell me about what spurred on this apocalyptic world?
05:04Mainly the 2008 financial crisis, which made me so angry.
05:10I wanted to write something which would be a metaphor for that kind of rage and which would feature the
05:20city of London as its kind of centre.
05:23When I started the book, I had a few of the characters and I had some of the settings and
05:30I had a few bits and pieces that I'd already written.
05:33I have it here.
05:34Can you show it to the camera, Joel?
05:39But it wasn't working.
05:40It didn't work.
05:42So I put it in a drawer for a couple of years and then I decided to cannibalize parts of
05:48it to make short stories because it wasn't working.
05:51And one of the short stories gave me the entire setting for the book.
05:57I suddenly thought, well, this is the blueprint.
06:00This is what I was waiting for.
06:02And so I took the whole thing back into my hands and worked from there.
06:08How did it feel when you found out?
06:10I was blown away.
06:12It was just not even on my radar as a possibility.
06:15So I was just absolutely flabbergasted about the long list and then just, yeah, I just walked around in a
06:20bit of a, yeah, weird cloud for a couple of months.
06:23And so, yeah, it's meant everything to me being on the short list.
06:27It has been life changing already and just having a bigger readership than I ever thought my work would reach.
06:34How many people are asking you, where did the inspiration come from?
06:37Are people worried about you now?
06:39Yes, yeah, there's definitely an element of people just being slightly concerned, which I mean, I always think like with
06:46writing, especially if you're writing in the first person, you just want to kind of be yourself, but worse.
06:50So you can sort of safely exaggerate the things that are wrong with you and the things that are your
06:53sort of main flaws and just make that into your art form, essentially.
06:59So you're kind of okay.
07:00You're kind of fairly level and you just put all of the bad stuff into the into the fiction and
07:05it sort of exercises it in some way.
07:07That's how I defend it.
07:08I don't have very high hopes.
07:10And so I just like being around all the writers and and celebrating books.
07:14You know, I think it's I think it's good that we get together and the Booker Prize has all this
07:18energy for about six months out of the year.
07:20But it gets people talking, but also fighting about books.
07:22I mean, it's amazing if you watch what happens online where everyone's like, I don't like that book and I
07:27want this one to win.
07:28It's almost like the Grand National.
07:29And so I think that's just a great buzz to help people discover new books.
07:35And do you run to buy the other ones or do you get sent them?
07:37How does it work?
07:38Yeah, I do.
07:39I always I'm a bit of a swot.
07:41And so I go and I buy the other ones because I, you know, it's also a lovely discovery for
07:46me, too.
07:46And it gets me reading things that I normally wouldn't pick up in the shop.
07:49And so I often discover things that become new favourites.
07:53And, you know, they read 170 books or 160 books and some of them they read two and three times.
07:59And so you might not agree with everything they choose, but you at least know that they've done their homework.
08:03I've never been to a literary award before.
08:05Never.
08:06My first time.
08:08So when you were asked to be on the panel, on the judging panel, was it quite nerve wracking or
08:11were you very excited about the prospect?
08:14I was aware of being the least qualified person on the jury.
08:19Because, you know, everybody else is either a writer or works in the publishing industry.
08:24But I do write, but not lots of stuff.
08:27So I was very honoured to be asked.
08:32And it took me a while to decide because I was busy.
08:36But in the end, I was glad I accepted it because then it gave me something to do on long
08:42flights.
08:43You know, we were touring.
08:44But it's kind of, it's quite boring that, you know, you can get through a book and a book keeps
08:49you a company and the time passes quicker.