Rebecca Perry shortlisted for 2026 Booker Prize
Huge congratulations to Rebecca Perry, whose debut novel May We Feed the King has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. The prestigious literary award selects the best English language novel published in the UK and Ireland each year. May We Feed the King is one of six finalists.
The finalists were chosen this year by a panel of five judges, including poet Raymond Antrobus, who spoke at Margate Bookie last year. Also on the panel are writer and broadcaster Mary Beard, musician and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker, journalist Rebecca Liu and writer Patricia Lockwood.
The judges described May We Feed the King as “an affecting and lush jewel of a novel that moves between our present-day world to a medieval court and unsettles the idea that there’s ever one universal historical truth.”
Perry adds, “Two characters – a woman using replica food scenes to conjure spirits in her home and a young attendant to a dying King – came to me separately, and I was writing them in two short stories. At a certain point I realised their world, in a way, was the same one and I embarked on the novel.
“I knew I wanted to write historical fiction somewhat outside of the genre and, as the book developed, I became preoccupied by questions of memory, agency and imagination. Concurrently, horrifying global events unfolding on the orders of cruel, tyrannical men began feeding into questions the book had about power and responsibility.”
Rebecca Perry will discuss May We Feed the King at Turner Contemporary in Margate on 17 October, as part of this year’s Margate Bookie.