Jarvis Cocker, one of the judges for this year’s Booker prize, has expressed surprise that the shortlist, announced this week, contains four male authors and only two female writers, because, “generally speaking, the male-written books weren’t as good as the ones written by women”.
The Pulp frontman might be on to something. Over the past 10 years, however, seven Booker winners have been men; the number of women boosted to four by the controversial joint win between Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood in 2019. The 2024 Booker shortlist was the first to have five female authors in the prize’s history. Last year’s winner Flesh, by British-Hungarian author David Szalay, stripped what being a man means down to its bones.
This year’s contenders all approach the same question through wildly different forms: historical, domestic, dystopian and comic fiction. The novels by female authors both have male protagonists: a reluctant medieval monarch in Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed the King and a 57-year-old history teacher in contemporary Massachusetts in The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.
The Disappearers by Marlon James and John of John by Douglas Stuart, both previous Booker win...