Reading list: Every Booker Prize winner for the last 10 years

Harvey’s narrative covers twenty-four hours aboard the International Space Station, recording sixteen orbits around Earth.The six astronauts manage routine scientific duties while observing continental weather shifts, ocean patterns and human infrastructure from space. As the shortest novel to receive the award in over forty years, it prompted debate regarding length and structure in contemporary prize-winning fiction.

Set in a near-future Ireland undergoing democratic erosion, Lynch follows Eilish Stack, a scientist trying to maintain family stability after her union leader husband disappears into police custody. The prose omits standard paragraph breaks to reflect escalating panic, serving as an examination of political collapse within a Western state.

A slain photographer wakes up in an administrative afterlife during the 1990 Sri Lankan Civil War. Given seven days to navigate the spiritual realm, he attempts to guide friends toward buried photographs detailing state and paramilitary violence. The work brought widespread international focus to Sri Lanka's post-colonial history and political conflict.

This Booker Prize winner examines a white South African farming family across four decades, structured around four deaths. The plot focuses on an unkept pledge to give a house and land to a Black domestic worker, measuring the gap between political reform and material restitution in post-apartheid South Africa.

Stuart details childhood in 1980s public housing during Glasgow’s industrial decline. Young Shuggie attempts to protect his mother, Agnes, as she struggles with severe alcoholism and social isolation. The debut novel achieved substantial commercial sales internationally and reignited public discussion regarding working-class representation in British publishing.

Evaristo uses line breaks and minimal punctuation to link the narratives of twelve predominantly Black British figures across generations. The novel moves between working-class roots, artistic circles and corporate environments, marking the first time a Black woman won the award.

This Booker Prize winner functions as a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, set fifteen years after the original storyline.Narrative control is split between three women, including Aunt Lydia, detailing the institutional corruption and administrative infighting that destabilise the Gilead regime. The release became an immediate commercial publishing event.

Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, an unnamed eighteen-year-old girl is targeted by a senior paramilitary figure.Written in dense blocks of text, the novel examines how community surveillance, gender dynamics and political factionalism force compliance. It was the first win for an author from Northern Ireland.

Saunders mixes historical citations with multi-voiced graveyard dialogue to recreate the night President Abraham Lincoln visited the crypt of his deceased eleven-year-old son. The narrative uses the Buddhist concept of the bardo to explore grief against the backdrop of the American Civil War.

Beatty’s satire focuses on an urban farmer who attempts to reintroduce segregation and slavery in a southern California municipality to force a Supreme Court review. The work uses absurdism to critique race relations and modern civil rights policy, making Beatty the first American writer to secure the prize following rule changes in 2014 that opened eligibility to all English-language authors.

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