The Booker Prize 2023 shortlistees on the films that have inspired them

Ahead of a special live Q&A with this year’s Booker winner, and the screening of a film to match their book, we asked our shortlisted authors about their favourite movies, and who they’d like to bring their books to the big screen

Published November 10, 2023

We’d like to encourage people who love great fiction to explore more great cinema, and vice versa, which is why we recently asked MUBI, the global streaming service, production company and film distributor, to suggest a great film to match each of the six books on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist. You can find their suggestions here.

We have also teamed up with HOME in Manchester for a special live event on Tuesday 28 November at 5.45pm. HOME will host the first in-person Q&A with the winner of the Booker Prize 2023 (which is announced on Sunday 26 November), followed by a screening of the film that MUBI has paired with this year’s winning novel. Tickets are available here.

In advance of that event, we asked each of the authors on this year’s shortlist to tell us more about their favourite films, how cinema has influenced their writing, and which filmmakers they’d like to adapt their shortlisted novels for the screen.

For a 30-day free trial of MUBI to watch the six films mentioned above, click here.

Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting

Do you see any parallels between your novel, The Bee Sting, and any films, either in terms of themes, story, characters or atmosphere? If so, which films?

Dickie, the dad in the book, has got into prepping. Like a lot of people, his sense of what the future might look like has been heavily influenced by The Road. Take Shelter is about a marriage coming apart in the shadow of (real? imaginary?) apocalypse, and stars Michael Shannon, who’s always worth watching. Klaus Kinski doesn’t have a family in Fitzcarraldo, but otherwise does fit the template of the Crazy Dad, putting his family through hell in search of his personal utopia. That’s what the artist does, of course; the making-of documentary, Burden of Dreams, is great too.

Dickie’s teenage daughter, Cass, is one of my favourite characters, and her story revolves around her obsession with her friend Elaine. Frances Ha is such a beautiful film – I don’t know if there are parallels, in that Frances is in New York whereas Cass is languishing in the Irish midlands, but if you want a film about friendship and youth, it’s an absolute gem.

Do you ever take inspiration from cinema while writing - if so are there any films or directors that have influenced you over the years, or with this book in particular?

David Lynch is one of my favourite directors - the way he upends time and logic in Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. I particularly love Twin Peaks – the image of the red curtains materialising in the midnight forest is sublime. There’s a forest in The Bee Sting, and that’s what comes to mind when you ask about cinematic influences – forests are places of confusion, depersonalisation, transformation, concepts which cinema can visualise very vividly.

I went on a big Kurosawa binge when I was writing this book – Rashomon, which is mostly set in a woods, has some gorgeous cinematography of the changing light through the trees, and structurally too it gave me some ideas – the characters taking turns to tell competing versions the story, so there’s no final, authentic narrative. That worked well translated to a family, the points of view as weapons in a tacit, unending war.

In the final part of the book, the POV switches from one character to another with increasingly rapidity – I didn’t set out to make it cinematic or visual, but I feel like being familiar with cinematic editing definitely helped bring this together.

Adaptation, by Charlie Kaufman, is a film I’ve watched and re-watched over the years. I find it really inspiring, although it’s about failure, and I always recommend it to students as a guide to the artistic life. Kaufman is such a singular writer and thinker, he’s so brave and committed to his vision. Nicolas Cage is sublime in this, furthermore.

If The Bee Sting were a movie, who’s directing it, and who is starring in it?

Oh man, now all I can think of is Nicolas Cage. Could he play all the parts? Who would we get to direct it? It would have to be Herzog, wouldn’t it?

Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting — Paul Murray, author of *The Bee Sting*

Chetna Maroo, author of Western Lane

Do you ever take inspiration from films while writing – if so are there any films or directors that spring to mind?

I do. A few touchstones: the 2015 film Mustang directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Our Little Sister directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. Céline Sciamma’s films: Tomboy, My Life as a Courgette, Petite Maman. I was intrigued by the choreographies of these films, the ways children and women move in relation to one another. I was also very struck by this thought from Peter Bradshaw’s review of Our Little Sister: ‘There is something subtly subversive in the emotional dynamic Koreeda creates with having three or four women on the screen.’

If Western Lane were a movie, who’s directing it, and who is starring in it?

Oh! Céline Sciamma or Hirokazu Kore-eda directing. I’d imagine unknown actors playing the three sisters in the novel. I’m not sure about the father, but Sanjeev Bhaskar is Uncle Pavan.

Chetna Maroo, author of Western Lane — Chetna Maroo, author of *Western Lane*
*© Ray Burmiston*

Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song

Do you see any parallels between your novel, Prophet Song, and any films, either in terms of themes, story, characters or atmosphere? If so, which films?

My imagination is intensely cinematic and I write what I see as though it were cinema. There are some set-pieces and long sentences in Prophet Song that are designed to move through the reader’s mind like a long tracking shot without a cut. I much prefer writing that demonstrates a book’s ideas rather than telling it. That’s what gets me to sit up as a reader and that’s what I set out to do.

Do you ever take inspiration from cinema while writing - if so are there any films or directors that have influenced you over the years, or with this book in particular?

Before I became a novelist, I reviewed over a thousand films as chief film critic for Ireland’s now sadly defunct national newspaper, the Sunday Tribune. I tend to favour films that show us who and what we are at a deeper level, films that distil a profound human truth. I adore the work of Bresson, Bergman, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock, and many more, but the modern master I adore most is Michael Haneke. I had a vote on last year’s Sight and Sound decade poll and included The White Ribbon on my list. His influence runs throughout my work: the precision, the commitment to truth at all costs, the fearlessness in delivering the result. When it came to the ending of Prophet Song, an ending that is both a provocation and a question, I took courage from Haneke.

If Prophet Song were a movie, who’s directing it, and who is starring in it?

Alfonso Cuarón, if you are reading this, please get in touch. (I have seen Roma three times already and am not done with it yet). For the character of Eilish Stack, nobody else would do but Caitríona Balfe.

Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song — Paul Lynch, author of *Prophet Song*
*© Ray Burmiston*

Paul Harding, author of This Other Eden

Do you see any parallels between your novel, This Other Eden, and any films – current or otherwise – either in terms of themes, story, characters or atmosphere? If so, which films?

I can’t remember where I saw it, but either just before or just after This Other Eden was published, someone mentioned that the book put them in mind of a film called Daughters of the Dust. I hadn’t seen the movie, but was immediately interested in doing so because for me a big part of writing novels is having them sort of illuminate works of art and artists which are new to me. Also, I’m fascinated with the uses and mysteries of influence. In particular, I’m fascinated with the kind of influence that is almost analogous to quantum entanglement in physics – which is the experience of discovering after the fact other works of art that very much influenced your own, although you were unfamiliar with them at the time.

When my first novel, Tinkers, was published there was a review – in the Irish Times, I think – that speculated about how much the book was influenced or in conversation with Samuel Beckett’s novel, Malone Dies. I’d never read it. Well, I read it and it turned out Tinkers was very much in a dialogue with it, without my knowing. Anyway, the same thing happened with Julie Dash’s absolutely sublime film, which is about several generations of a Gullah family living on an island off the coast of South Carolina. I rented it one Friday night, watched it twice in a row, went to bed, and watched it again the next day. It’s so good and deep and self-contained – such an absolute, total vision – that I’m not even jealous, just quietly and utterly knocked out by it. It resists paraphrase; you just have to see it for yourself. I can’t think of a higher compliment than that.

Do you ever take inspiration from cinema while writing – if so, are there any films or directors that spring to mind?

I don’t really think about particular films or directors when I write, maybe because my books tend to be set in periods before film was a predominant medium? I put that as a question because I’m not really sure. But I definitely take inspiration from things like cinematography and lighting. Although I think specifically in terms of prose narrative, I ‘see’, moving the reader through my world via a series of ‘long takes’, that (hopefully) choreograph the angles and vantages and depths of field, as it were, specific to first person, second person, third person, selectively limited and omniscient points of view, present and past, simple and perfect tenses, and so forth, so that they are seamlessly and fully immersed in the world of the story. I also love coordinating the lighting according to that choreography, following and shaping the shifting lights and shadows.

If This Other Eden were a movie, who’s directing it, and who is starring in it?

I have no idea! I’ve ‘directed’ the novel, and the characters are all individuals in themselves, with whom I do not associate any actors. But, of course, I’d be thrilled for there to be a film based on the novel that succeeds on its own terms, according to its maker’s own vision of the book. I love the phenomenon of works of art inspiring other works of art which have their own integrity. It’d be astonishing to see my novel refracted through the minds of a director and a cast of actors.

Paul Harding, author of This Other Eden — Paul Harding, author of *This Other Eden*
*© Ray Burmiston*

Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You

Do you see any parallels between If I Survive You and any films, either in terms of themes, story, characters or atmosphere? If so, which films?

One film that comes to mind is The Last Black Man in San Francisco, in which the main character, Jimmie, dreams of reclaiming the Victorian house his grandfather built in the city. Much like the protagonist in If I Survive You, the desire to reclaim the family home is tied to an idea that Jimmie can correct the injustices of the past and make him and his family whole again. At the same time, Jimmie’s hometown treats him like a stranger and Trelawny feels this in Miami and extends that sense to the entirety of his country of birth.

Do you ever take inspiration from cinema while writing – if so are there any films or directors that have influenced you over the years, or with this book in particular?

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight was the first film (that I’m aware of) to depict life in Miami with any real seriousness or nuance. It avoids the usual cliché depictions of Miami-as-South Beach and Miami as exotic wonderland. I felt encouraged to keep writing about Cutler Bay after seeing Liberty City centered in the film. Beyond setting, the film explores nuances of Black masculinity and queerness with the tenderness the subject matter deserves, and that too I found inspiring.

If your novel were a movie, who’s directing it, and who is starring in it?

I’ve been particularly drawn to projects by Barry Jenkins, Steve McQueen, and Hiro Murai that focus on specific ethnic enclaves and subcultures. As far as the actors, I only know that the core cast would be of the Jamaican diaspora.

Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You
*© Cola Greenhill-Casados*

Sarah Bernstein, author of Study for Obedience

Do you see any parallels between Study for Obedience and any films, either in terms of themes, story, characters or atmosphere? If so, which films?

I was thinking a bit about Bergman’s Persona, where one character’s silence takes on a distinct kind of power over another. And then I was also thinking about Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies and the way history lives on in and distorts the present. I especially love the opening scene of that film, where one character arranges other characters in a bar in a kind of dance rendition of a total solar eclipse.