{"id":608405,"date":"2026-07-28T15:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608405\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T15:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:13:13","slug":"booker-prize-2026-irish-debutant-features-on-longlist-alongside-marlon-james-douglas-stuart-and-more-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608405\/","title":{"rendered":"Booker Prize 2026: Irish debutant features on longlist alongside Marlon James, Douglas Stuart and more \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Djamel White<\/a>, a 28-year-old Irish writer and former Dublin<\/a> tattoo shop manager, is the youngest author on this year\u2019s \u00a350,000 Booker Prize<\/a> longlist with his first novel, All Them Dogs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The judges called it \u201ca mouthy, ballsy and bracingly unsentimental portrait of west Dublin gangland, set well off the beaten track of the city\u2019s usual literary landmarks\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt charts the lives, loyalties and dealings of a semi-organised crime world. Yet, the novel\u2019s real achievement lies in something quieter and more easily overlooked beneath the bullets and bone-breaking dramatics: a subtle, textured humanity woven among the violent hyper-masculine protagonists,\u201d the judges said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Author Djamel White: \u2018I didn\u2019t feel like I fit in at school or at home\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite is an impressive stylist. He has an ear for dialogue that is both racy and real, and a gift for atmospheric description that feels at once inventive and classically grounded. This writer understands that the vernacular of the street, handled with precision and care, can carry as much emotional and literary weight as any elevated register.\u201d<\/p>\n

Books on the longlist and judges\u2019 comments\"books\"books The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA mysterious and free-wheeling novel which moves between the real world and dream-states. We were charmed by its suggestion that the most meaningful truths can be found in the shadows.\u201d <\/p>\n

Switzy by Emma Cline <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cCline writes vividly about all the trappings of the elite \u2013 the private jets, the heirloom watches \u2013 as well as their sad social cost in a story that feels immersive, elegiac, and very real.”<\/p>\n

Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA spellbinding novel or a play with just four characters? Philosophically, politically, and spiritually adventurous, this slim, ambitious volume has the power to transform.\u201d<\/p>\n

The End of Everything by M John Harrison <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA book not just about everything but about now. Shimmering, oblique, it holds the reader to the surface of something very grave and deep.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Disappearers by Marlon James <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA book that examines territory Caribbean literature has rarely dared to occupy, as what begins as a theatrical story becomes something closer to a reckoning. James is a singular literary talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Bag by Luke Kennard <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis of-the-moment satire considers anonymity and disgust, online rackets, and what it means to find love in our unstable times. We admired its sharply crafted sentences and humour.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Renovation by Kenan Orhan <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA hilarious fantasy which had some of the judges laughing out loud. But it also poses questions about political activism, belonging, and the different forms imprisonment can take.\u201d<\/p>\n

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA wonderfully enticing combination of themes, woven together with a delicacy of touch. You can\u2019t read it without reflecting on the fragile boundary between the present and the past.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA note-perfect portrait of rarefied London intellectual spaces, and the people who make up that impersonal thing we think of as the Establishment. Minimalist, precise, and indelible.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA devastating look at the dangerous cracks in family life and in the contemporary world at large. Strout\u2019s prose is brilliantly understated and all the more powerful for that.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

John of John by Douglas Stuart <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis excavation of family, violence and shame is woven through with beautiful imagistic detail, and \u2013 unexpectedly \u2013 shades of hope. We loved the rich, textural detail of the story.” Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All Them Dogs by Djamel White <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA ballsy, unsentimental portrait of west Dublin gangland, set well off the beaten track of the city\u2019s usual literary landmarks. White has an ear for dialogue that is both racy and real.\u201d Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams <\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cA bracing antidote to the cosy campus and the dark academia novel, The Vivisectors is genuinely experimental, relentlessly and rollickingly told \u2013 and in places truly menacing.” Read our review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As well as two other debutants, the longlist includes two former winners, Marlon James<\/a> (A Brief History of Seven Killings<\/a>, 2015) and Douglas Stuart<\/a> (Shuggie Bain<\/a>, 2020), and three-time nominee Elizabeth Strout<\/a>. M John Harrison, aged 81, would become the oldest winner of the prize (a title held by Margaret Atwood<\/a>, who was 79 when she jointly won in 2019 with The Testaments).<\/p>\n

The shortest novel is Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman at just more than 140 pages, whilst the longest \u2013 Marlon James\u2019s The Disappearers \u2013 is more than 600 pages long.<\/p>\n

Marlon James\u2019s blurb for All Them Dogs called it \u201ca book you inhale, devour, grapple with, and reel from, more than read … where everything is on the edge of a knife and where love, like death, is either a kiss or a bullet away\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Elizabeth Strout: \u2018It\u2019s a deeply sad time in the US\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In her Irish Times review of White\u2019s book<\/a>, Elizabeth Mannion wrote: \u201cAll Them Dogs is filled with a street lyricism that mines masculinity in a manner reminiscent of Jim Carroll or Robert McLiam Wilson. There\u2019s a poetry on the pages here that tenderises even the most hardened characters, as they alternately strut and cower at the mercy of criminal impulses. That\u2019s part of this novel\u2019s magic. And it is a magical piece of writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

White spent most of his childhood in Cavan with his mother, stepfather and brother. He never met his father, an Algerian man his mother met when she was an au pair in France. He now lives with his mother and grandparents in Lucan.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/p>\n

After attending an early school leavers course at Kylemore Community Training Centre, White had an internship with Fighting Words, the creative writing NGO set up by Roddy Doyle<\/a> and Se\u00e1n Love, and later became a volunteer mentor. \u201cMy formative years, without question, were the years I spent in Fighting Words,\u201d he wrote in his introduction to last year\u2019s Fighting Words supplement in The Irish Times.<\/p>\n

He went on to study at UCD aged 21 where he earned a bachelor of arts in English and creative writing, followed by a master of fine arts degree in creative writing, and was mentored by writers including Anne Enright, who said: \u201cIn the best Irish style, Djamel White uses a local voice to blast through language and make it new. His hero, Tony Ward, is a bittersweet confection of self-defeating swagger and All Them Dogs is a stylish, adroit and gritty debut.\u201d <\/p>\n

Doyle has described White\u2019s book as a hugely satisfying read that is \u201cexhilarating and often frightening\u201d. \u201cIt adds new streets to Dublin\u2019s literary map,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In an interview in The Irish Times<\/a> earlier this year, White described himself as a \u201cworking-class writer\u201d. He became a reader early on, inspired by a teacher reading him Roald Dahl at school. \u201cI wasn\u2019t a sporty kid \u2026 So that was the thing I latched on to. And the act of doing it was celebrated. My family aren\u2019t readers. We never had books in the house. My family were really impressed by it … It made me very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

All Them Dogs emerged from a short story, Blue Opel, in which he first developed the wounded, violent Tony.<\/p>\n

The longlist was selected by the 2026 judging panel, chaired by classicist Mary Beard, and featuring poet Raymond Antrobus; Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker; critic Rebecca Liu; and Booker Prize-shortlisted author Patricia Lockwood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an extraordinary seven months,\u201d Beard said. \u201cThe five Booker judges have each read 163 books, discussed and debated them, and sometimes re-read them, to whittle them down to a longlist of just 13. <\/p>\n

\u201cGreat books have never been written to a single formula. We are confident that our longlist has something for everyone. There\u2019s the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there\u2019s dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there\u2019s the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they are set anywhere and everywhere: Ireland and Italy, Mexico and Massachusetts, Jamaica and the Hebrides, universities, private planes and pubs, past, present and future. But there\u2019s one thing they all share. Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Mary Beard: \u2018What are historians in the future going to find weird about us?\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks are not mirrors: they don\u2019t simply reflect ourselves back to us. One of the many important things about fiction is that it helps us see what it might be like not to be us, to begin to understand the perspectives of others, and to imagine what it might be like to see the world differently. Great books are not cosy. In their various ways, the novels we have chosen are (we hope) dynamite.”<\/p>\n

The shortlist will be announced at the Southbank Centre in London on September 22nd and the winner on November 9th at Old Billingsgate in London. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Djamel White, a 28-year-old Irish writer and former Dublin tattoo shop manager, is the youngest author on this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18196,18,141025,117,19,17,226555,192313,58910],"class_list":["post-608405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-booker-prize","tag-eire","tag-elizabeth-strout","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jarvis-cocker","tag-mary-beard","tag-roddy-doyle"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116998256687045705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}