The Only Debut On The Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist, Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed The King (Picture Credit – The Booker Prize)
\n\nA curator is laying the dining tables of a king almost nobody remembers. She works in the private quarters of a medieval palace, dressing rooms for public display, and the further she gets into his reign, the less secure her own present becomes.
\n\nThat is 'May We Feed the King', published by Granta on 29 January and running to 272 pages. It is the only first novel on the Booker Prize 2026 shortlist, facing two previous Booker winners, a Pulitzer laureate and a man of eighty-one with fifty-five years of books behind him. The winner is announced on Monday.
\n\nRebecca Perry is not a beginner, and the shortlist's framing slightly obscures that. She was born in Croydon in 1986, took an MA in creative writing at Manchester in 2008, and has been publishing since 2011.
\n\nShe is a poet first. 'Little Armoured' appeared as a pamphlet with Seren that year and won the Purple Moose Poetry Prize. 'Beauty / Beauty' followed from Bloodaxe in 2015, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and took the Michael Murphy…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
