Paul was the first name shared by three authors on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist: Paul Harding, Paul Lynch and Paul Murray. Their shortlisted novels were This Other Eden, Prophet Song and The Bee Sting.
The 2023 shortlist contained six authors and was announced on 21 September. The repeated first name is a small but memorable pattern in a field otherwise made up of Sarah Bernstein, Jonathan Escoffery and Chetna Maroo.
Paul Lynch ultimately won the prize for Prophet Song, a dystopian novel about a family confronting authoritarian collapse in Ireland. The question concerns the shortlist, not the winner: the name Paul appeared three times among the six authors.