Today (Thursday, 23 April 2026), to coincide with The Reading Agency’s World Book Night celebrations, the Booker Prize Foundation announces the publication of a Booker Prizes Quick Read – All Around the World: Stories by Booker Prize Writers – marking the start of a new partnership between the two charities. The collection of short stories from Booker Prize and International Booker Prize nominated authors is curated and introduced by Roddy Doyle and published by Penguin Random House, with the aim of getting more people reading for pleasure through access to the world’s best fiction.

The announcement comes as The Reading Agency celebrates 20 years of Quick Reads – our flagship initiative to help less confident or lapsed adult readers access the power of reading. Quick Reads are short, accessible books written by popular authors and made available in communities across the UK. Unlike other short-form fiction, Quick Reads go through a rigorous review process to ensure accessibility – including testing for readability, concentration, and suitability for those building reading confidence.

The collection features stories from Anne Enright (winner of the Booker Prize 2007 with The Gathering and longlisted for the 2015 prize with The Green Road), Andrey Kurkov (longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023 with Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv and in 2024 with The Silver Bone), Nadifa Mohamed (shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 with The Fortune Men), Yoko Ogawa (shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020 with The Memory Police), David Szalay (winner of the Booker Prize 2025 with Flesh and shortlisted for the 2016 prize with All That Man Is), Yael van der Wouden (shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 with The Safekeep), as well as a story from Doyle (who won the Booker Prize in 1993 with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and was Chair of judges in 2025).

The book is being published, distributed and marketed in early June 2026 – half-way through the UK Government’s National Year of Reading. The Booker Prize Foundation has appointed award-winning creative communications agency Work & Class to help bring the collection to new audiences, drawing on the agency’s expertise in reaching people often overlooked by traditional marketing.

10,000 copies of the title will be gifted through libraries and community gifting partners to adults who have barriers to accessing reading, including less confident readers, lapsed readers, people with English as a second language and neurodivergent readers. The book will also be available for £1 from retailers, including BookKind, the online bookshop that donates 10% of every sale to charity, including the Booker Prize Foundation.

Booker Prize-winning author and former Chair of judges Roddy Doyle says:

“I’m delighted to be involved with Quick Reads as they are all about creating new readers and I’ve seen at first-hand how low levels of literacy have a negative effect on people’s lives. Literacy is the key to opening doors for everyone.
I often think that writing a short story is a bit like building a house. Each word is a brick. We write one sentence – a row of bricks. Then we write another sentence on top of it. And another one. The sentences become a wall – a paragraph. Then we move on to the next wall – more rows of sentences, until we have a house or a story.
In this Quick Reads book, All Around the World, there are seven stories, from very different places. Japan, Ireland, Ukraine, Holland, Somalia – and mid-air. Seven writers wrote them but everyone in the world, everyone who uses words – you, the reader – helped to create them.”

Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation Gaby Wood said:

“At the Booker Prize Foundation we have long admired the way the Quick Reads programme, and The Reading Agency’s steering of it, invites all readers to be part of the cultural conversation. For many years the Booker Prize Foundation has increased access to Booker Prizes titles through libraries, in prisons and YOIs, and with the partially sighted.
But we know that not everyone has the confidence or the time to read those prize-winning or nominated books. We thought: what if we were to work with Quick Reads, and produce books by Booker and International Booker authors, with emerging or lapsed adult readers in mind?
This volume has been thoughtfully curated by Roddy Doyle, who is beloved for his own witty and tender portrayals of everyday lives. It brings together seven tales by world-class storytellers, whose work will take readers to different parts of the world and to different places in their minds. We hope it will inspire new readers as much as it has inspired us in the making of it.”

Karen Napier, CEO of The Reading Agency, said of partnering with the Booker Prize Foundation and Penguin Random House on the All Around the World Booker Prizes Quick Reads title:

‘For 20 years, Quick Reads has proved that the right book at the right moment can change everything. Partnering with the Booker Prizes and Penguin Random House on All Around the World feels like a natural next step in that mission, bringing some of the world’s finest storytelling directly to adults who may never have seen themselves as readers. We know that almost half of adults in the UK don’t consider themselves readers, and that one in three don’t regularly read for pleasure. That’s not always a lack of interest but a lack of access and confidence. We hope that for many readers, All Around the World will be the beginning of a life-long reading journey.”

Research from the Reading Agency shows that regular reading can transform lives, improving wellbeing, social mobility, and long-term life chances but that almost half of adults in the UK say they are not readers and one in three do not regularly read for pleasure.

Quick Reads is a proven high-impact programme designed to help adults overcome barriers to reading. Since it launched in 2006, it has distributed over five million books, collaborated with over 30 publishers, and resulted in over six million library loans.

The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity designed to inspire more people to read – and write – the world’s best fiction. There are three Booker Prizes: the Booker Prize, the International Booker Prize and the Children’s Booker Prize. Through them and other projects, the Foundation’s aim is to become a partner for life: engaging new and existing readers from childhood onwards.

Working together, The Reading Agency and the Booker Prize Foundation hope to create a new library of Quick Reads by Booker Prize authors. These may lead readers to other books by those writers, to other Quick Reads, or they may form a way into the reading habit more generally.

The stories in All Around the World are:

‘Until the Girl Died’ by Anne Enright
‘Afternoon at the Bakery’ by Yoko Ogawa
‘The Buggy’ by Roddy Doyle
‘Flight’ by David Szalay
‘Filsan’ by Nadifa Mohamed
‘No Need to Fear the Depths’ by Andrey Kurkov
‘Into the Mud’ by Yael van der Wouden

The other six Quick Reads 2026 titles will be distributed on World Book Night via prisons, community groups, charities, and foodbanks across the UK.

The post New Booker Prizes Quick Read will give more adults access to the world’s best fiction appeared first on The Reading Agency.

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