Justine Jordan
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Works on books desk, @guardian. Booker judge 2024. Views my own
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Articles by Justine Jordan
Booker Prize 2026: The Guardian's book team is live answering your questions
LIVE – Updated at 13:41 This year's shortlist for the Booker prize was announced last night. Our books editors are here to answer your questions about the contenders, the judges and literary fiction. Is the shortlist very conventional? Petherick asks: I've read the whole longlist for the first time this year (thanks to my local library).
Booker prize 2026: ask our books team anything about this year’s contenders
Guardian books editors Liese Spencer, Justine Jordan and Charlotte Northedge Illustration: Guardian Design Welcome to the conversation For today’s reader Q&A we’ll be discussing the newly announced shortlist for the 2026 Booker prize which was revealed last night at a discussion at London’s Southbank centre featuring this year’s judging panel: Jarvis Cocker, Mary Beard, Patricia Lockwood, Raymond Antrobus and the Guardian’s own Rebecca Liu.
This Booker longlist may have two previous winners, but it’s keen to experiment
A trove of ideas … this year’s Booker prize longlist novels. Photograph: Booker Prize Foundation This year’s Booker longlist is led by two previous winners. Twelve years on from A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James returns to Jamaica in The Disappearers, out in September: a polyphonic epic of a murderous mob attack on a gay theatre group in 1988 Kingston, and the two-decade aftermath of trauma and revenge that follows.
70 brilliant books for the summer
Sat, 13 June 2026 at 8:00 am UTC Illustrations: Tom Haugomat/The GuardianIllustration: Tom Haugomat/The Guardian default *** *** A middle-aged writer returns to his college town to record the final interview with his 90-year-old intellectual mentor.
Books to look out for in 2026 – fiction
Justine Jordan The beginning of the books calendar is usually dominated by debuts, but January 2026 sees releases from some of the year's biggest authors. Known for his surreally bittersweet short stories, George Saunders has written only one novel so far – but that one won the Booker prize. The follow-up to 2017's Lincoln in the Bardo, Vigil (Bloomsbury) focuses on an unquiet spirit called Jill who helps others pass over from life to whatever comes next.
Illustration: Debora Szpilman There aren’t many giants of 20th-century literature still writing, but 2025 saw the first novel in 12 years from American great Thomas Pynchon, now in his late 80s: Shadow Ticket (Jonathan Cape) is a typically larky prohibition-era whodunnit, set against rising nazism and making sprawling connections with the spectre of fascism today.
The risky strategy of Booker winner Flesh pays off
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The risky strategy of Booker winner Flesh pays off
‘Gut punch’ … David Szalay at the Booker prize shortlist readings event. Photograph: David Parry/Shutterstock Reflecting on the Booker judging process, chair Roddy Doyle stressed the “singularity” of Flesh, the most unusual novel on the shortlist.
This year’s Booker prize longlist looks in new directions
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This year’s Booker prize longlist looks in new directions
Kiran Desai, pictured after winning the Booker prize in 2006. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The Guardian This year’s Booker judges had a crowded field to pick from, with scores of eligible books from previously nominated writers and five new novels from winners alone (John Banville, Kiran Desai, Alan Hollinghurst, Ian McEwan and Ben Okri).
Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now
default default Fiction Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A rich exploration of female experience, Adichie’s first novel in 10 years charts the lives and loves of four women in Nigeria and the US, from a “dream count” of ex-boyfriends to a section inspired by Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s alleged rape of a Guinean hotel worker in 2011. Magisterial, wide-ranging and delicately done.
If you only read one book this year … make it this one!
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If you only read one book this year … make it this one!
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Our experts will help you find the right read, without all the effort. Photograph: Tim Macpherson/Getty Images/Image Source According to new data from YouGov, 40% of British adults have not read a single book in the last year, with the median Briton having read or listened to three. In a world where there are so many other distractions and forms of entertainment to choose from, fewer and fewer people are getting stuck into books – yet lots of us would like to be reading more.
By Lisa Allardice Verified, William Boyd, Abir Mukherjee, Sara Collins Verified, Ben Johns, Justine Jordan Verified, Brooke Smith, Nikesh Shukla, Jeffrey Boakye, Mairi Oliver
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Alan Garner on writing, folklore and experiencing time slips in the Pennines
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The best fiction of 2024
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The best fiction of 2024
Composite: Guardian In a year of surprises – a posthumous fable from Gabriel García Márquez, a superhero collaboration between China Miéville and Keanu Reeves – the biggest news, as ever, was a new Sally Rooney novel. Intermezzo (Faber) landed in September: the story of two brothers mourning their father and negotiating relationships with each other and the women in their lives, it is a heartfelt examination of love, sex and grief.
Shortlisted 4thWrite prize stories reveal ‘desire to connect’
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The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe review – ingenious cosy crime spoof
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The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe review - ingenious cosy crime spoof
Tales of dark academia in The Proof of My Innocence.Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images Well, it worked for Richard Osman. Twenty-three-year-old Phyl, stuck in her parents’ house with an English degree and a zero-hours job in a sushi chain, is wondering how hard it could be to write a cosy crime novel. “Death in a Thatched Cottage? The Beach Hut Murders? The Flapjack Poisonings?” As another character points out, it’s bizarre that violent homicide has been rebranded as “cosy”.
Each of the six Booker novels does something unique
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the books to look out for in 2024
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From Salman Rushdie to RuPaul: the books to look out for in 2024
Illustration: Lisa Maltby January Nonfiction The Showman: The Inside Story of the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster (William Collins) Having gained remarkable access to the Ukrainian president over the course of the Russian invasion, Time correspondent Shuster explains the character and motivations of the actor turned war hero.
The best fiction of 2023
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The best fiction of 2023
The book I’ve recommended most this year – and had the most enthusiastic feedback about, a whopping 656 pages later – is without doubt Paul Murray’s Booker-shortlisted tragicomedy, The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton). This story of an Irish family’s tribulations told from four points of view combines freewheeling hilarity with savage irony, surprise reveals and generations-deep sadness; it offers the immersive pleasures that perhaps only a fat family saga can bring.
The best fiction of 2023
The book I’ve recommended most this year – and had the most enthusiastic feedback about, a whopping 656 pages later – is without doubt Paul Murray’s Booker-shortlisted tragicomedy, The Bee Sting (Hamish Hamilton). This story of an Irish family’s tribulations told from four points of view combines freewheeling hilarity with savage irony, surprise reveals and generations-deep sadness; it offers the immersive pleasures that perhaps only a fat family saga can bring.
4thWrite prize shortlist reveals more rising literary stars
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4thWrite prize shortlist reveals more rising literary stars
Ranging across continents and genres, the six stories in contention for 2023’s award have been praised for ‘distinctiveness and depth of feeling’ The shortlist for this year’s 4thWrite prize, open to unpublished writers of colour in the UK and Ireland, ranges from civil rights-era Kansas to contemporary Japan, and from office politics to a dystopian fantasy about the politics of reproduction.
Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson review – a mixed bag of stories
It’s 20 years since Kate Atkinson’s first short story collection, Not the End of the World. She has filled that time with five satisfyingly unusual detective novels; her Costa-winning masterpiece of alternative existences, Life After Life, and its companion A God in Ruins; plus books set around second world war spying (Transcription) and the 1920s criminal underworld (Shrines of Gaiety). In this new collection, it is the end of the world – repeatedly.
Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson review – a mixed bag of stories
Americans aren’t getting what a majority of us want, even when we show up in majority numbers to vote. The problem is that we’ve trusted the rich to run things here in America for 42 years now since the Reagan Revolution, and it’s not working.
2023’s biggest new books
Fiction Historical delightsZadie Smith’s The Fraud (Hamish Hamilton) kicks off a strong season for historical fiction. Also in September, AK Blakemore follows her acclaimed The Manningtree Witches with a darkly exuberant novel about one man’s insatiable hunger. Set in revolutionary France, The Glutton (Granta) is inspired by contemporary reports of a peasant who would eat anything, from dead rats to forks; and explores poverty, desire and social chaos in thrilling prose.
Irish writers, debuts - and groundbreaking sci-fi: the Booker longlist in depth
Those accustomed to complaining about the number of American writers nominated for the Booker prize since the widening of eligibility in 2014 will get a pleasant surprise this year: the sector that leads is Irish writers – and people called Paul. That’s not the only surprise; the judges have chosen to spotlight some little-known debuts in the place of major novels.
Summer reading: 50 brilliant books to discover
Fiction Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld Sittenfeld has imagined the lives and loves of both Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton in bestselling novels. This time her subject is Sally Milz, a self-deprecating scriptwriter on a Saturday Night Live-style TV show. When Sally meets Noah, a pop star she assumes to be out of her league, the ensuing romcom is lifted by Sittenfeld’s sharp writing and eye for amusing detail. A perfect beach companion.
Summer reading: 50 brilliant books to discover
22 hours ago Korean culture – known as Hallyu – has dominated popular culture for the past half-decade, but the best Korean movies have been a core part of the global arthouse cinema circle for far longer than that. That being said, even some of the most lauded, arguably the historical Korean movies have only …
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray review - a tragicomic triumph
Paul Murray’s second book, Skippy Dies, was one of the standout novels of the previous decade: a riotously entertaining tragicomedy, set in a posh Dublin boys’ school, in which bone-deep sorrow and pathos cut through the teenage hilarity and fart jokes.
Best fiction of 2022
Some of the year’s biggest books were the most divisive. In her follow-up to A Little Life, To Paradise (Picador), Hanya Yanagihara split the critics with an epic if inconclusive saga of privilege and suffering in three alternative Americas: a genderqueered late 19th century, the Aids-blasted 1980s, and a totalitarian future degraded by waves of pandemics. I was impressed by its vast canvas and portrayal of individual psychic damage set against seismic historical change.
Best fiction of 2020
As the first lockdown descended in March, sales of Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Camus’s La Peste soared, but there were uncanny echoes of Covid-19 to be found in this year’s novels too. Maggie O’Farrell’s tender, heartbreaking Hamnet (Tinder), which went on to win the Women’s prize, illuminates life and love in the shadow of death four centuries ago.
Douglas Stuart's Booker win heralds arrival of a fully formed voice
© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer Though there were four debuts on the Booker shortlist, it’s been more than a decade since a debut won. And with two magisterial novels from established writers in Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body on the list, first-timer Douglas Stuart’s success may come as a surprise.
The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay review - an extraordinary debut
Photograph: Tony Phillips/AAP Wittgenstein wrote that “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.” In her fierce debut novel, Australian Laura Jean McKay sets herself an extraordinary challenge: to represent animal communication in words. The book succeeds by walking a difficult and delicate line between understanding and incomprehension, creating something like dirty realism out of its fantastical premise.
Susanna Clarke: ‘I was cut off from the world, bound in one place by illness’
Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian Sixteen years ago, Susanna Clarke’s debut novel became a publishing phenomenon. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is an unlikely story of intellectual obsession, set in a Regency England in which the buried powers of English magic are reawoken by two scholar magicians. The prose style mashes together Jane Austen and Charles Dickens for a tale that ranges across all levels of society as well as to fairyland and the battlefields of the Napoleonic war.
Biggest books of autumn 2020: what to read in a very busy year
This autumn will be like no other in the world of books. It’s always a busy season, but Covid-19 postponements mean that in September alone, 16,443 titles will be published in the UK (including ebooks and audio): 76% of these are nonfiction. Publishers are worried that much will get lost, but one of the surefire hits is Caitlin Moran’s memoir More Than a Woman (Ebury).
Pilgrims by Matthew Kneale review - a slyly comic medieval journey
Photograph: Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Matthew Kneale will probably always be best known for the award-winning English Passengers, his exuberant polyphonic novel in 21 voices. Interweaving a 19th-century British seafaring expedition in search of the garden of Eden with a vicious episode in Australian colonial history, it dramatised the clash between faith and science, empathy and self-interest.
Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin review - timely visions of a virtual reality
Every technological innovation both changes its human users and uncovers something new about our nature. In this ingenious novel, Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin conducts an unnerving thought experiment: if an individual could be virtually inserted into the life of a random stranger, anywhere in the world, what effects would that have on them both? And what hidden truths would be revealed?
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld review - a fearless vision of toxic masculinity
Photograph: Neil Squires/PA In her award-winning first two novels, 2009’s After the Fire, A Still Small Voice and 2013’s All the Birds Singing, Anglo-Australian author Evie Wyld wrote with intensity and precision about toxic masculinity and emotional damage. The past was always snapping at the heels of her characters, coming to hunt them down.
Susan Choi: ‘A lot of people seem to feel very seen by the book’
Susan Choi is “pretty partial” when describing Trust Exercise, which has won the National Book award for fiction and been a runaway sensation in her native US. “It’s a novel that begins with a group of young people at a performing arts school in the 1980s and follows them through a variety of events in their lives … and that’s all I say.
Raymond Briggs: ‘Everything takes so bloody long when you’re old’
Famously, Raymond Briggs hates Christmas; it’s one of the ironies of modern publishing that this self-described “grumpy old man” has become inextricably linked with the juggernaut of the festive season. The animation of his picture book The Snowman, first screened in 1982, is now as traditional as mince pies and family rows. Stage shows, adverts, toys, toilet paper – “it’s a worldwide industry,” he marvels. “China, Japan: a world of Snowmen.
Best fiction of 2019
It has been a year of doubles: two Nobel laureates, two Booker winners, even two Ian McEwan novels (his Kafka-lite satire The Cockroach was yet more fallout from Brexit). Having promised to look beyond Europe after skipping the award in 2018, the Nobel committee honoured two Europeans: the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk and, more controversially, Austrian Milošević-supporter Peter Handke.
Love by Hanne Ørstavik review - a chilling study of emotional distance
Photograph: Tim Graham/Alamy In this perfectly poised Norwegian novella, Vibeke and her young son Jon have recently moved to the far north of Norway. The book follows them through one long evening and into the dead of night, as the cold and dark press in.
In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt review - a shapeshifting quest
Photograph: Joao Almeida/Alamy Stock Photo “Once upon a time there was and there wasn’t a woman who went to the woods … ” US author Laird Hunt’s riddling, shapeshifting novel makes full use of the fertile ambiguity of fairytale: its wide-eyed rhetorical certainty and resistance to final interpretation. Crumbs of information dropped throughout the text suggest that we are in colonial-era Puritan New England, where a woman has settled with her husband and son.
Booker judges try to have it both ways
Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images With the hindsight of history, the Booker misses plenty of tricks. In 1986, The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the most vital and prescient works of modern fiction, was pipped to the prize by Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils. With Margaret Atwood now elevated to the status of a contemporary prophet, 2019 may have seemed like an opportunity to redress that mistake.
The Anatomy of the Perfect Mobile Email
October 13, 2011 By Justine Jordan Designing emails that look great no matter where they’re read can be quite the challenge. As more people read email on mobile devices, chances are your recipient might view your email both on a mobile phone as well as on their desktop. Take the guesswork out of designing your next mobile-friendly email with this infographic. We’ve outlined ten important guidelines to an amazing mobile email experience, as well as six things you’ll definitely want to avoid.
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