Past winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart head a Booker longlist along with first-timers

Former Booker Prize winners Marlon James and Douglas Stuart have been included on the 2026 longlist. The 13-title selection, known as the “Booker Dozen”, is largely made up of writers new to the prize, with ten first-time nominees, including three debut novelists.

James won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld). This year, he is nominated for The Disappearers (Hamish Hamilton), which sees him return to the Jamaican setting of his Booker-winning novel following the publication of two fantasy novels in his Dark Star series. Stuart, who won the 2020 prize with his debut novel, Shuggie Bain, returns to the longlist with John of John (Picador), a polyphonic novel set on the Isle of Harris.

Should either James or Stuart win, they would join J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel and Margaret Atwood as two-time Booker Prize winners.