Illustration: Tim Bouckley

‘It took me a decade’: the 2023 Booker prize shortlisted authors on the stories behind their novels

Paul Murray, Chetna Maroo, Paul Lynch, Jonathan Escoffery, Sarah Bernstein, Paul Harding

Saturday 18 November 2023

Paul Murray

The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton)

 Photograph: Patrick Bolger/

I started writing The Bee Sting at the end of 2017. I’d spent the previous 18 months working on a screenplay and I was aching to get back to the freedom and possibility of a novel. But for a long time I couldn’t decide what to write. I had three very different ideas and I started making notes for each one: blocking out scenes, tracing character arcs, all that. Looking back, I can see I was nervous about beginning something new after being away from fiction for so long, and trying to prove to myself that it would work. But notes don’t tell you anything about a novel’s voice, which is the most important thing about it, and which you won’t discover until you actually start to write.

 

The Booker judge Esi Edugyan described the shortlist discussions as ‘often enthralling, sometimes intimate, sometimes charged’.

Just one British writer makes the Booker prize shortlist

This article is more than 1 month old

Chetna Maroo’s ‘mesmerising’ Western Lane has been chosen on a male-dominated list

 ‘Portraits of what it means to be alive today’: how we chose the 2023 Booker prize shortlist

Ella Creamer

Thursday 21 September 2023

Just one novel by a British writer has made the shortlist for this year’s Booker prize: Western Lane by Chetna Maroo. The list is also weighted towards male writers for the first time in eight years.

Four of the six shortlist places went to novels by men: Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, This Other Eden by Paul Harding, and If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. Study for Obedience by the Canadian writer Sarah Bernstein completes the list. None of the six authors have been shortlisted for the prize before.

Booker prize reveals ‘original and thrilling’ 2023 longlist

Booker prize reveals ‘original and thrilling’ 2023 longlist

Previously nominated authors Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng and Paul Murray join 13-strong field including four debuts

Ella Creamer

Tuesday 1 August 2023

A longlist of 13 “original and thrilling” books offering “startling portraits of the current” are in contention for the 2023 Booker Prize, the UK’s most prestigious literary award.

The longlist features four debut novelists and six others who have been longlisted for the first time, alongside Sebastian Barry, Tan Twan Eng and Paul Murray, who have seven previous Booker nominations between them.

The Booker prize 2023 longlist

A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Canongate)

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Granta Books)

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (4th Estate)

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Harvill Secker)

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (Hutchinson Heinemann)

Pearl by Siân Hughes (The Indigo Press)

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (Tinder Press)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Oneworld)

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (Picador)

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton)

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate)

Rare ability … Chetna Maroo. Photograph: Graeme Jackson

BOOK OF THE DAY

Review

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo review – a tender debut

The tensions of family life are vividly conveyed in this novel of growing pains, grief and squash

Booker prize reveals ‘original and thrilling’ 2023 longlist

Caleb Klaces

Wednesday 26 April 2026

C

hetna Maroo’s debut novel begins a few days after 11-year-old Gopi’s mother’s funeral, which leaves Gopi and her two older sisters in the care of their father. Gopi practises squash every day at Western Lane, a sports centre just outside London. The book ends with her playing the final of the Durham and Cleveland squash tournament. The arc is a Hollywood staple: tragedy, sporting trial, potential triumph. The tension is heightened by squash-obsessed, emotionally uncommunicative Pa; fearful Aunt Ranjan is the obstacle that stands in Gopi’s way. There is a love interest, Ged, whose mother intervenes at just the right moment for the plot (and the wrong moment for Gopi).