Black Bag LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026

<p><b>LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026</b></p><p><b>'The funniest and smartest novel I've read in a while' ZADIE SMITH</b></p><p><b>'<i>Black Bag</i> made me laugh aloud dozens and dozens of times . . . I loved its inventive originality and its ambition: it is very powerfully worth your time' KATHERINE RUNDELL</b></p><p><b>'Ya gotta read <i>Black Bag</i>'</b> <b>FERN BRADY</b></p><p><b>'A campus novel for our end times . . . <i>Black Bag</i> fizzes with wit and invention' <i>Observer</i></b></p><p><b>'A triumph of deadpan comedy . . . As surreal and ambitious as Tom McCarthy's <i>Remainder</i>, only written by someone with the comic instincts of <i>Peep Show</i>'s Jesse Armstrong' <i>Sunday Times</i></b></p><p><b>'Hilarious and poignant . . . Luke's prose ripples with unusual images and wry aphorisms. An ode to the importance of friendship, tenderness and love' <i>TLS</i></b></p><p><b>'With all the fuss about the manosphere, <i>Black Bag </i>comes as comic relief . . . profound as well as funny' </b><i><b>Standard</b></i></p><p><b>'Had me laughing from page one' </b><i><b>New Statesman</b></i></p><p><b>'Very, very funny' GQ</b></p><p><b>'Winningly wry, both vulnerable and dyspeptic'</b> <i><b>Mail on Sunday</b></i></p><p>A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation . . . </p><p>A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story, <i>Black Bag</i> is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.</p><p><b>'A masterpiece from one of the best writers at work today . . . Wildly original and funny, yet always underpinned by depth of feeling, this is a novel like no other' </b><b>JOE DUNTHORNE, author of<i> Submarine</i></b></p><p><b>'This brilliant novel made me laugh, think, worry about a man on a swan pedalo and almost shed a tear into the dark leather of my own consciousness' WILL ASHON, author of <i>The Passengers</i></b></p><p><b>'Absurdly good. <i>Peep Show</i> meets <i>Fight Club</i>. The novel of male interiority we've all been waiting for' CLARE POLLARD, author of <i>Delphi</i></b></p>