The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist features a diverse range of authors – read their novels now

Taking inspiration from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Bulawayo’s second novel is set in the animal kingdom of Jidada, an oppressive fictional African country. It’s the story of an uprising in a country that’s stuck in a cycle as old as time and centres around the fall of Old Horse, the long-standing leader. It’s said to be an emotional rollercoaster that takes on big themes of genocide, misogyny and racism.

The judges described the book as a “magical crossing of the African continent in its political excesses and its wacky characters. Here the fable is never far from the reality”.

A real page-turner, The Trees opens with a series of murders in a rural part of Mississippi. As the investigation unravels, further eerie revelations are discovered. The novel is said to provide a powerful critique of racism and police violence.

The judges called it a “dance of death with jokes – horrifying and howlingly funny”. It “asks questions about history and justice and allows not a single easy answer”.

Treacle Walker is the story of an introspective young boy, Joe, who forms a friendship with a wandering healer as he tries to make sense of the world. Fusing together myth and folklore, as well as providing an exploration of modern science, Garner’s novel is said to be a moving tale.

With all the author’s stories, they “draw you relentlessly into their echoing metaphysical and emotional space: this one made some of us cry”, noted the judges.

Against the backdrop of murderous mayhem in a Sri Lanka beset by civil war comes Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which the judges described as being a “whodunnit and race against time”. Full of ghosts and gags, the novel dissects the dark side of Sri Lanka’s history and it’s full of energy.

Despite being just 116 pages in length, making it the shortest book to ever be recognised by the Booker Prize, Small Things Like These has been described by The Independent as being “a gem” of a novel. It’s set in a small Irish town and introduces us to a coal merchant, Bill Furlong, who feels the past rising up within him as he experiences people’s complicit silences regarding church control.

Oh William! is the third in a series of books about the fictional character Lucy Barton, who the Booker Prize judges previously described as being “brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and most of all, ordinary”. They said it’s “one of those quietly radiant books that finds the deepest mysteries in the simplest things”. They praised “gentle reflections on marriage, family, love and loneliness” for being “utterly piercing”.