The 2020 Booker Prize Shortlist

Real Life: A Novel
Brandon Taylor
Through the lens of higher academia, Brandon Taylor takes a look at race and queerness in this profound story of intimacy, loneliness, desire and trauma. A poignant coming-of-age debut that brilliantly captures the inner and outer struggles of an introverted, gay, Black graduate student, one that questions the real cost of overcoming private wounds. “Psychologically compelling, incisively satirical, told in a muted style that nevertheless accesses a full emotional range, this is a brilliant book, worthy of a wide audience.”—The Guardian

The Shadow King: A Novel 
Maaza Mengiste
Haunting, breathtaking and brutal, Maaza Mengiste crafts a fierce, indelible exploration of what it means to be a woman at war in this gripping tale set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. This novel has made its way to the top of several ‘best books’ lists and has been praised for its particular focus and perspective on a historical moment left out of the history books. “The Shadow King is a beautiful and devastating work; of women holding together a world ripping itself apart. They will slip into your dreams and overtake your memories.”—Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The New Wilderness 
Diane Cook
In a world ravaged by climate change and a search for a new way of life, Diane Cook paints a picture of a mother’s love pitted against the forces of nature. “This manages to be a speculative novel about the future and a well-researched tale about living primitively… More than timely, the novel feels timeless, solid, like a forgotten classic recently resurfaced—a brutal, beguiling fairy tale about humanity. But at its core, The New Wilderness is really about motherhood, and about the world we make (or unmake) for our children.”—The Washington Post

Shuggie Bain 
Douglas Stuart
A working-class mother and son in 1980s Glasgow grapple with addiction, sexuality and love in Douglas Stuart’s blistering and heartrending debut. Stuart has a great love for his characters, evident in every word of this panoramic portrait of family and place, one where Shuggie and Agnes stay with you long after the story ends. “[B]lending the tragic with the funny, the unsparing with the tender, the compassionate with the excruciating… This overwhelmingly vivid novel is not just an accomplished debut. It also feels like a moving act of filial reverence.”—James Walton, New York Review of Books

This Mournable Body 
Tsitsi Dangarembga
A psychologically charged novel from Tsitsi Dangarembga (one of Zimbabwe’s most notable authors) that uses a woman’s journey to independence as a means to reveal how toxic colonialism and capitalism can be. Here, Dangarembga returns to the protagonist of her acclaimed first novel, Nervous Conditions, and examines how hope and potential can sour when caught in a never-ending struggle for survival. With great compassion, this “novel explores how race, gender, class, and age are at play in Zimbabwe, and the overwhelming strength of these forces in the face of even the most optimistic and ambitious women.”—Vanity Fair

Burnt Sugar: A Novel 
Avni Doshi
Avni Doshi mixes intense empathy with caustic wit in a mother-daughter story where memories are questioned, bonds are tested, and love isn’t always enough. A searing debut that explores shifting power dynamics and questions the subjective nature of truth. “Raw, wise and cuttingly funny on love and cruelty, marriage and motherhood, art and illness, and one woman’s fight for her sense of self. A courageous novel written in spare, gleaming sentences.”— Tishani Doshi, author of Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods