Masculinity dominates the 2026 Booker Prize shortlist

Three of the six books on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist explore masculinity and male sexuality. Interestingly, last year’s Booker Prize winner, David Szalay, also placed modern masculinity at the centre of his story, Flesh .

The 2026 shortlist, announced last week, features two previous Booker Prize winners — Marlon James and Douglas Stuart — as well as Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.

James’s The Disappearers , described by The New York Times as “the novel of the decade, if not the century”, centres on an attack on a group of gay men in late-1980s Jamaica, while they are rehearsing a play. At 640 pages, it is the longest book on the list. James earlier took home the Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings.