Black Bag by Luke Kennard

2026 BOOKER PIZE LONGLIST 

An out-of-work actor accepts the role of a lifetime—sitting soundlessly in a lecture theater, zipped into a large leather bag—to aid a professor’s psychological experiment. What could possibly go wrong?

In Luke Kennard’s audacious new novel, 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 an oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of Fall 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?—and the actor’s childhood friend forms a vision for monetizing this new situation . . .

A warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity, and an off-kilter love story, Black Bag is a firework of a blazingly funny and profoundly humane.