The Sellout takes place in the fictional town of Dickens, California, an agrarian town around LA. It begins with its narrator, an African-American farmer whose father has recently been unjustly killed by police, known only as "Me", or "Bonbon" - a nickname, standing trial before the Supreme Court for crimes related to his attempt to restore slavery and segregation in Dickens. What follows is an examination of the alternately painfully real and highly surreal events that led to this seemingly absurd scenario.

A Brief History of Seven Killings is about an attempt on the life of Bob Marley in 1976. Except, of course, it’s about far more than that. It’s also far from brief at almost 700 dense pages, and covers considerably more than seven killings, typically in graphic and visceral detail. It’s actually about several decades of complex and violent Jamaican history, told through a multiplicity of voices from gang leaders to politicians, journalists and seemingly peripheral “ordinary” people. Oh, and a ghost. Because of course.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North tells the story of Dorrigo Evans, a famed war veteran and public figure in his later years, who considers his accolades to be unjustly earned. The novel reflects on major moments in his life, most centrally his role in the Australian Imperial Force during World War II and his regiment's internment as hard labourers on the notorious Burma Death Railway. In this period he is reluctantly installed as the commander of his regiment in the camp, and is forced into making numerous impossible choices that will inevitably lead to the death of his comrades. Against this is a constant thread focusing on his obsession with his brief affair with his uncle's wife, Amy, prior to the war, and his ongoing post-war infidelities to his wife and mother of his children, Ella.

The Luminaries takes us to New Zealand, during the Gold Rush years in the mid Nineteenth Century. In straightforward plot terms, it’s a mystery novel centering on the aftermath of a series of seemingly disconnected events in the town of Hokitika. Central is the death of a little-known hermit, Crosbie Wells, alongside the disappearance of a rich young prospector, Emery Staines, and the arrest of opiate-addicted prostitute Anna Wetherell.

Bring Up the Bodies is the sequel to Mantel's 2009 Booker winner, Wolf Hall. It continues to follow the life of Thomas Cromwell, blacksmith's son now risen to Master Secretary to the King's Privy Council. King Henry VIII is tiring of his second wife Anne Boleyn, who has yet to bear him a male heir, and beginning to fall in love with Jane Seymour, a former attendant to the Queen and inhabitant of Wolf Hall.

The Sense of an Ending is a short novel narrated by a retired, divorced man named Tony Webster. Its first part sees him recalling a series of incidents from his schooldays, largely concerning his group of intellectual / pretentious friends, of which the most significant is the newcomer Adrian. Eventually the two head off to separate universities where Tony has a short, unsatisfying relationship with a girl called Veronica, which involves an awkward visit to her family, and a meeting with his schoolfriends in London. Towards the end of his degree, he finds out that Adrian is dating Veronica. Not long afterwards, he finds out that Adrian has committed suicide, with a letter to the coroner citing philosophical reasons, which Tony admires.

The Finkler Question is a comic but thought-provoking novel focusing largely on the lives and relationships between three men. Julian Treslove is a former BBC radio producer, drifting through middle age with a lack of direction and stable relationship, and working as an impersonator of various Hollywood stars. He is friends with two men who are both recently widowed: Sam Finkler, his old school friend, is a popular Jewish philosopher and TV personality, and Libor Sevcik is their former teacher and a former Hollywood gossip columnist, nearing ninety.

The Booker in the Nineties was all big ideas, grand narratives and excess, a decade distilled in book form under the glare of the tabloid press. In some sense this held true as the new millennium rolled over… and it some senses, well, it didn’t at all. As in the rest of life, and culture, the Booker in the Noughties felt more fragmented. More individual stories shining a light on hitherto ignored groups, but with the dominant Bookerati never too far around the corner.

Wolf Hall is the first part of Mantel's trilogy telling a fictionalised version of the life of Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540. This first novel covers the years 1500 to 1537, beginning with an account of Cromwell's youthful abuse at the hands of his blacksmith father, and ending with the execution of Thomas More, with Cromwell overseeing as one of the most powerful men in the country.

The White Tiger is a darkly humorous satire told in the voice of Balram Halwai, brought up in village poverty in what he describes as India's "darkness." The novel is told in the form of a letter from Balram to the then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. From a lower caste (by name, a sweetmaker) Balram sees his father die in poverty and vows to escape the "Rooster Coop" system that enslaves millions of Indians while others prosper in "the Light."

The Gathering is told from the perspective of a 39-year-old Irish mother, Veronica Hegarty, who is one of a family of twelve siblings. It focuses on the funeral and wake of her closest brother, Liam, who has recently taken his own life in the sea at Brighton.

The Inheritance of Loss is a novel that focuses on the diverse experiences of the inhabitants of a decaying colonial-era mansion in Kalimpong, and their relatives and friends. The primary focus is on two characters: Sai, an orphan living with her grandfather, retired judge Jemubhai Patel; and Biju, the son of the house's cook, who is living in New York illegally.

The Sea is narrated by Max Morden, a retired art historian reflecting on key moments of love and loss in his life. With little delineation, Max shifts his narration between three timeframes. The oldest covers a period in his childhood, during a summer holiday in a seaside town called Ballyless, where he becomes infatuated with a middle-class family, the Graces. His obsession focuses first on the mother, Connie, and then (in a different way) the daughter Chloe, who is also inextricably linked to her mute twin, Myles. We're also introduced to Carlos, the husband, and Rose, the twins' nursemaid. This part is in many ways the centrepiece and the events within it echo and reverberate across the other sections.

The Line of Beauty is a 1980s-set novel covered the peak years of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative rule and the growth of the AIDS crisis. It focuses on Nick Guest, a recent Oxford graduate writing his PhD on Henry James. Now living in a Notting Hill townhouse belonging to the parents of his college friend (and crush) Toby Fedden. The patriarch of the family is Thatcher-obsessed MP Gerald Fedden, married to Rachel and also father to Catherine, a troubled character who forms a closer bond with Nick.

Vernon God Little is the story of Vernon Gregory Little, a teenager in smalltown Texas whose life is turned upside down when his best friend is responsible for a massacre at his high school. Although Vernon was absent for the event in question, running an errand for his teacher, he ends up being pinned with blame for the atrocity, accused of being an accessory and eventually perpetrator of the crime. He’s undone by a combination of outright self-serving treachery (from his mother’s romantic interest and all-round sleaze “Lally”), poor decision making from older relatives and friends (who encourage his repeated escapes from law and order) and herd mentality (where eventually everyone, including his own mother, comes to blame him, because the telly tells them to…)

Life of Pi is the story of Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, an Indian Tamil boy who grows up in Pondicherry as the son of a zookeeper. The novel is divided into three sections, framed by an author’s note which unusually is also a fiction. The longest middle section sees Pi cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean as his Canada-bound ship sinks without explanation. He recounts his tale of survival, adrift on a lifeboat in the company of Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, for 227 days.

True History of the Kelly Gang is a heavily fictionalized account of the Australian legend of Ned Kelly, a national icon to many, a “horse-thief and murderer” to others. Set in late nineteenth century Victoria, in a rural landscape north-east of Melbourne, it covers Kelly’s life from childhood through through his apprenticeship with notorious bushranger Harry Power, to infamy with his brother and two friends as the “Kelly Gang”, culminating in a dramatic shootout with the gang clad in “ironman” costumes.

The Blind Assassin contains three layers of narrative (all, it seems, titled The Blind Assassin.) The main story is realist novel with a grand historical sweep across major events of Canadian and world history, narrated by Iris Chase-Griffen, from the vantage point of the present day and addressed to her one surviving granddaughter. In this narrative, she reflects on her life and especially her relationship with her sister Laura, who died in a (presumably deliberate) car crash 10 days after the end of the Second World War. We also learn that her husband, the businessman and aspiring politician Richard Griffen, drowned shortly afterwards.

In this mass media glare of the 90s Booker,  there’s evidence here and there of yet more self-consciousness on the part of the rotating panel of judges. There’s the occasional tendency to try to replicate old success stories, which more often than not falls flat. Experimentation happens here and there, welcome when it does, however successful. We start to get a firmer sense of “Booker type” novels, leading to a sense of exhaustion with some of the winners. More importantly, the sense that many of those “Booker type” novels come from the pens of a certain “Booker type” author (white, middle class, overwhelmingly male) can no longer be ignored.

Disgrace is told from the perspective of David Lurie, a divorced literature professor at a university in post-Apartheid Cape Town. The first half of the novel details Lurie’s life as an aging academic and Byron obsessive, satisfying himself with weekly visits to prostitutes. He loses everything following his pursuit and eventual rape of a young female student, and subsequent refusal to co-operate with an enquiry that seems designed to protect him.