“May We Feed the King” by Rebecca Perry
Debut novelist Rebecca Perry has had a dream run with May We Feed the King. She won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2026, an Observer Best Debut novelist and has been shortlisted for The Booker Prize 2026. In fact, the winner of the latter will be announced in a few hours from now.
May We Feed the King is set in two time periods. The present where a curator is commissioned to dress up rooms in a historic building. While on assignment, she meets an archivist who informs her about the 31 kings who had lived in the building within a space of 400 years. But it is one particular king who catches the curator’s fancy. It is a very short entry in the archives, although the page is much scribbled over. The digging into the archives, the exploration, and later the walkabout through the installations by the curator for the ticketed guests, bookend the novel. The middle section is taken up by imagining what it would have been like to live as a contemporary of this king.
The section on the king is the longest in the book. It is also where the poet-turned-author Rebecca Perry delves into history, without saying “what if” does exactly that with different scenarios. Each chapter reads like a stanza. The courtiers and others in the royal household have speaking parts and provide the chorus to the appointment of the new king, the political machinations, the impending war, quelling of the rebellion in the kingdom, and the sexual escapades that occur in the royal chambers.
Through it all, the desriptions of the food whether real as served to the king or later recreated with wax models by the curator are truly sumptious and in keeping with the mood of the scene.
The fact that this novel made it thus far to the Booker Prize shortlist is extraordinary. It is a poised voice. Sure and steady. Previously, Rebecca Perry has published two full-length poetry collections – Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit – both published by Bloodaxe Books (2015, 2021), as well as four pamphlets. Her poetry has been shortlisted for awards including the TS Eliot Prize and her first collection won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Her first work of creative non-fiction – On Trampolining – was published by Makina Books in 2023. May We Feed the King has been published by Granta. It is distributed locally by Hachette India.
Whether Perry wins tonight or not is not the point. It is the emergence of a new literary voice that is to be celebrated.
9 Nov 2026
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