The judges for next year’s Booker Prize have been announced. Edmund de Waal, a writer and potter, will lead the 2024 judges. He is known for his stunning large-scale artistic installations and books such as The Hare with Amber Eyes, which won the Costa Book Award for Biography in 2011. He will be joined by award-winning novelist Sarah Collins, The Guardian’s deputy literary editor Justin Jordan, world-renowned writer and professor Yoon Lee, and musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.
The Booker Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards and is given annually to the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 and international recognition, as well as a boost in sales and readership. The 2024 prize is open to novels published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024.
From these, they will choose 12 or 13 shortlisted books, known as the ‘Booker Dozen’, which will be announced in July 2024.
The judges will select six titles for the final shortlist in September 2024, and the Booker Prize 2024 winner will be announced in November 2024.
De Waal is known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often inspired by collections, archives and the history of places. He has exhibited his work internationally and has created commissions for museums and public spaces. He is also Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster and a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum.
As an author, he has written several books on the history and aesthetics of ceramics, as well as two bestselling memoirs, The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road. His latest book, Letters to Camondo, was published in April 2021 and explores the life and legacy of a Jewish art collector in Paris.
The Booker Prize was awarded in 2023 to Irish writer Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel ‘Prophet Song’ and in 2022 to Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka for ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’. Considered one of the most prestigious honours in the world of English-language fiction, the award often transforms the lives of authors, boosting their book sales and establishing their status as literary legends.
