A Booker Prize finalist is set to appear at this year’s Margate Bookie festival.
Rebecca Perry has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize for her debut novel May We Feed the King. 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.
“Huge congratulations to Rebecca for this well-deserved recognition of her brilliant novel,” says Margate Bookie founder Andreas Loizou. “We cannot wait to hear all about May We Feed the King at Margate Bookie in October.”
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.”
Rebecca says of the book, “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.
Tickets are available now for just £12 at margatebookie.com/full-schedule-2026/rebecca-perry-xe2ga
Taking place on 16-18 October, Margate Bookie 2026 has an exciting line up of author talks and writing workshops.
See the full programme and book tickets at margatebookie.com
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