Top 5 Booker Prize Longlist Nominees

The Booker Prize Longlist was announced two weeks ago, and I’m here to give my top five picks from the lot. The Booker Prize is an award given to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK and Ireland. It’s a life-changing award that’s been given out for over 50 years. I try to read at least one winner every year, but there are seriously so many amazing novels from these lists that it’s hard to get to all of them. Here are my top five Booker Prize nominees from the 2019 longlist. Let’s get started.

Image from Amazon

1. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede is called in time and time again to save her sister from herself. Korede’s sister keeps killing her boyfriends. Korede struggles with turning her sister in to the Nigerian police, but ultimately, she decides family is more important than anything else. That is, until Korede’s sister starts dating the doctor Korede has been madly in love with for some time. Korede must choose between saving the man she loves from the inevitable or protecting her sister.

Image from Amazon

2. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World by Elif Shafak
Leila is dead. But for 10 minutes, 38 seconds she relives poignant memories from her life — memories of moments that made her the person she was up until the moment of her death. With each memory, she is reminded of the friend that she made during that time. Those friends are still desperately trying to find her as this novel unfolds.

Image from Goodreads

3. An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma
Chinonso and Ndali are bonded forever after Chinonso saves Ndali’s life. It’s Umuahia, Nigeria, and when they two say that want to wed, Ndali’s parents forbid it because Chinonso is not educated enough. In an effort to win Ndali’s parents’ approval, Chinonso sells most of his possessions to attend a local college, but once there, finds out it is not what it seems. This is both a modern-day retelling of the Odyssey and partly based on a true story.

Image from Amazon

4. Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
Night Boat to Tangier is about the mystery of love. It follows two aging Irishmen as they wait at a Spanish port for one of their estranged daughters to either arrive or depart. The novel is full of mystery, violence, and love. I don’t know what I’m stepping into with this one, but that’s half the fun.

Image from Amazon

5. The Wall by John Lanchester
The wall features Kavanaugh — a young boy who must spend the next two years patrolling the wall. Once his two years are up, he’s free. And he can’t wait to be free. But if something goes wrong while he’s on patrol, it could mean his death. The Wall is said to be a story about love, war, and mystery. It’s said to pit the young against the old, and it’s exactly the story we need in our lives with everything going on in our present day.

What Booker Prize longlist nominees are you looking forward to reading? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy reading,
Kimberly