The 2022 BOOKER PRIZE
Short List
What do the judges think of the books?
Order your reading now and tell us what you think.
The winner will be announced on 17 October.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka $40
"Colombo, 1990: Maali Almeida is dead, and he’s as confused about how and why as you are. A Sri Lankan whodunnit and a race against time, Seven Moons is full of ghosts, gags and a deep humanity. The voice of the novel – a first-person narrative rendered, with an astonishingly light touch, in the second person – is unforgettable: beguiling, unsentimental, by turns tender and angry and always unsparingly droll. This is Sri Lankan history as whodunnit, thriller, and existential fable teeming with the bolshiest of spirits. ‘You have one response for those who believe Colombo to be overcrowded: wait till you see it with ghosts.’ This is a deeply humane novel about how to live in intolerable circumstances, about whether change is possible, and how to set about coping if it’s not."
"When Treacle Walker appears off the Cheshire moor one day – a wanderer, a healer – an unlikely friendship is forged and the young boy is introduced to a world he could never have imagined. Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth and folklore, an exploration of the fluidity of time, a mysterious, beautifully written and affecting glimpse into the deep work of being human. Treacle Walker confronts the issues that anyone who ever lived has had to confront. The transition out of childhood. The transition into old age. The gaining and loss of personal agency. What we can expect to know about the world – and our life in it – and what we can’t; and how we face up to that. One of the central themes of the book is how – and from whom – we get our knowledge: that would seem to be a very important question, given the information environment in which people now live. Alan Garner’s novel draws you relentlessly into its echoing metaphysical and emotional space."
"Keegan is measured and merciless as she dissects the silent acquiescence of a 1980s Irish town in the Church’s cruel treatment of unmarried mothers – and the cost of one man’s moral courage. It is the tale, simply told, of one ordinary middle-aged man – Bill Furlong – who in December 1985, in a small Irish town, slowly grasps the enormity of the local convent’s heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies (one instance of what will soon be exposed as the scandal of the Magdalene laundries). We accompany Furlong, and we feel – and fear – for him as he realises what is happening, decides how he must in conscience act, and accepts what that action, in a small church-dominated town, will cost him, his wife and his children. The book is not so much about the nature of evil as the circumstances that allow it. More than Furlong’s quiet heroism, it explores the silent, self-interested complicity of a whole community, which makes it possible for such cruelty to persist. It forces every reader to ask what they are doing about the injustices that we choose not to think about too closely."
"Part southern noir, part something else entirely, The Trees is a dance of death with jokes – horrifying and howlingly funny – that asks questions about history and justice and allows not a single easy answer. The Trees is a mash-up of genres – murder mystery, southern noir, horror, slapstick comedy – handled with such skill that it becomes a medieval morality play spun through 20th-century pop culture to say something profound and urgent about the present moment. It’s an irresistible page-turner, hurtling headlong with swagger, humour, relish and rage. Everything about The Trees is relevant to today’s world. Everett looks at race in America with an unblinking eye, asking what it is to be haunted by history, and what it could or should mean to rise up in search of justice. Everything between the horror of the first murder scene and the last sentence is an adrenaline rush."
"Oh William! is one of those quietly radiant books that finds the deepest mysteries in the simplest things. Strout’s gentle reflections on marriage, family, love and loneliness are utterly piercing. Has there ever been a character quite like Lucy Barton? Unassuming and yet profound, entirely ordinary and yet deeply moving. A woman in her later life, full of doubt and regret, Lucy’s reflections illuminate the reader, too. Strout’s writing is steeped in compassion for human beings, damaged and disappointed, full of follies and frailties, but capable, too, of deep understanding. Lucy Barton is an older woman, divorced, with grown-up children, and yet still coming to terms with her own childhood and learning how little she has understood the people closest to her. Strout writes her with a capacious empathy and probing insight."
"A magical crossing of the African continent with its political excesses and its wacky characters. Here, the fable is never far from the reality. NoViolet Bulawayo describes her characters will make you think that there are no boundaries between our world and the world of animals. Destiny has returned to Jidada from a long exile. She witnesses the tumult, the revolution in the country and how the women are fighting against the regime. She is the symbol of the young African women in the continent. The Old Horse — it inevitable to see behind him the despotic president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe — has a strange cabinet: a Minister of the Revolution, a Minister of Things, a Minister of Nothing, and so on. This political satire goes beyond Zimbabwe and could relate to nations with despotic regimes around the world. It is also a book about feminism and power sharing."