The Booker Prize, initially named after sponsor company Booker, McConnell Ltd, was established in 1969 has become one of the world’s richest literary awards.
Previous winners have included Iris Murdoch, William Golding, Salman Rushdie, Kingsley Amis, Peter Carey, Pat Barker, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, and Hilary Mantel.
Originally it was only open to novels written in English by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African (and later Zimbabwean) authors, but in 2014 was opened up to all English-language fiction books.
This year’s shortlist has now been announced, chosen by the 2026 judging panel, chaired by celebrated classicist, writer and broadcaster Mary Beard, alongside award-winning poet, writer and educator Raymond Antrobus; musician, writer and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker; journalist, editor and critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood.
Here are the six books up for the prize, which will be announced at a ceremony on November 9, and who the bookies reckon have the best chance of winning. Odds supplied by William Hill.
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5. Luke Kennard: Black Bag - 6/1
The bookies reckon that 'Black Bag by Luke Kennard has a 6/1 chance of winning the biggest prize in British literature. "A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation..." | Contributed
6. M. John Harrison: The End Of Everything - 7/1
M. John Harrison's 'The End Of Everything' is the 7/1 outsider for this year's Booker Prize. "Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. It's been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscure. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end. Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can't keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artefact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows." | Contributed