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Booklists, Author Visits and Interviews

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Books Unlocked provides free copies of Booker Prize longlisted and shortlisted titles for participants to read, discuss and keep. We send out two lists every year for settings to choose from.

Books Unlocked booklist one

This list was sent out in February/March 2024 and has 10 titles. Settings were allowed to choose two titles from this list, and up to 15 copies of each title.

Click on the book covers below to find out more from the publishers:

  • Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (Pan Macmillan)
  • Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Granta Books)
  • If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo (Canongate)
  • 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak (Penguin Random House)
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Penguin Random House)
  • In Ascension by Martin MacInnes (Atlantic Books)
  • All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (Hachette UK)
  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate)
  • The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Canongate)

Books Unlocked booklist two

This list comprises of six titles, and was sent out in August. Settings are allowed to choose one title from this list, and order up to 15 copies of it.

Click on the book covers below to find out more from the publishers:

  • Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Hachette)
  • Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Pan Macmillan)
  • Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Granta Books)
  • The Trees by Percival Everett (Pan Macmillan)
  • Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (Fitzcarraldo)
  • How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Penguin Random House)

Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Author Visits

Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow visited HMP East Sutton Park to discuss her book All the Little Bird-Hearts, longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, with the residents there. This was a fantastic event, where the novel prompted discussions around relationships, vulnerability and motherhood, and particularly how autism can complicate these.

Read an interview with her and The Booker Prizes
Jonathan Escoffery

National Prison Radio Interviews

Within our partnership with NPR, where Booker Prize novels are serialized in their 11pm slot, we also organize author interviews to explore the book further. The interview is recorded by NPR and then aired to roughly 80,000 people in custody across the UK. The latest interview was with Jonathan Escoffery, the author of If I Survive You.

Watch an Q&A with him and The Booker Prizes here