Black Bag – Luke Kennard

READ FOR BOOKERTHON

Black Bag follows an unemployed actor who accepts a bizarre job participating in a psychology experiment where he spends a term attending university lectures zipped inside a large black leather bag. Inspired by a real experiment from 1967, this absurdist campus satire is full of dark humour and philosophical observations.

When damaged men have money and influence, that’s a problem for the whole world.

RACHEL
● Black Bag seemed like a wild card on the longlist, so for that reason I couldn’t help but pick it up. And I was hooked right from the start. The main character is a down-on-his-luck actor and he’s likeable from the outset. His willingness to accept a weird job where he wears a leather black bag over his whole body to university lectures endeared him to me.

I did not expect to feel so much for Black Bag, but I did. And I refer to him by his persona on purpose because it was like inside the bag he was a new person, someone fearless and unreserved. The anonymity of the bag stripped away his identity and therefore his fears, his worries, his looks and he could be anyone he wanted to.

No doubt there is a philosophical element to the story. About identity, about how we blindly accept anything if we are used to it, about masculinity, about how people are taken advantage of. Yet despite it’s serious nature and intelligent prose, it is also really funny. This is what I want from the Booker, something new and innovative in style that gets my mind whirling.

SUZY
● Black Bag is Booker prize shortlist perfection! A novel storyline that had me, a fairly rational person normally, wonder what would happen if I too was to wear a black bag as I went about my normal day-to-day life. Somehow the anti-hero main character became truly heroic in my eyes as he remained resolutely committed to his role. 

I do wonder what strong messaging I’m missing by taking the Black Bag storyline so literally. What is the meaning of the black bag? Is it perhaps a reflection of society’s ignorance of the wider issues of the world? Honestly, who knows. The joy of this novel is the many interpretations readers can take from it. I’m three shortlisters in at the moment, and this is my frontrunner for sure. 

Published 2026
John Murray
352 pages