All That Man Is comprises eleven short stories, each told from the perspective of a different man. The stories cover men of different ages, loosely in ascending order, beginning with a student and ending with an octogenarian nearing the end of life. Its eligibility for the Booker depended on it being considered a novel, which is something of a stretch. While there is one direct connection made between characters in different stories, and several others implied, the connection between the tales is more thematic than anything else, so in many senses not unusual for a short story collection., Which, let’s be honest, this is. Where Flesh took as its focus the full life of one man, this book instead views that same span of life through the eyes of a range of different men. While there are obvious differences, though, between the men, with some significant variation in social status alongside the obvious variety of ages, there are also many similarities. Is the book ‘all that man is’ in the sense of man in his ‘rich diversity’, or rather, ‘all that man is’ in the sense that, ultimately, there is not much to set us all apart? Is this limited range part of the point: at the heart of it, we’re all driven by the same few things and all destined for the same outcome?

The Benefactors is a novel told in a polyphony of voices, centring on the aftermath of a sexual assault that takes place at teenage party. Much of the novel’s focus is on the families of both the victim, Misty, and the three male protagonists. The young men’s mothers, while all very different, are part of a middle-class milieu that is utterly different from that inhabited by Misty, who lives in another part of town and is part of a family used to scraping money together to make ends meet. For her own part, Misty spends some of her time camming on an OnlyFans-style site called Benefactors (or ‘Bennyz’), which is used alongside her social status as ammunition by the mothers to discredit her. The book deals with this social divide, and the way in which the odds are stacked against the likes of Misty and her family, while those with money come together to protect their own, supported by a system that can’t be beaten.

The Persians focuses on the women from three generations of a wealthy and prestigious Iranian family, the Valiats, whose life paths bifurcated around the time of the Islamic Revolution. While sisters Shirin and Seema left (along with their brother, partners and Seema’s daughter Bita) for the USA, the family’s matriarch Elizabeth stayed behind in their homeland, as did - in more unusual circumstances - Shirin’s then six-year-old daughter Niaz.

The White Tiger is a darkly humorous satire told in the voice of Balram Halwai, brought up in village poverty in what he describes as India's "darkness." The novel is told in the form of a letter from Balram to the then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao. From a lower caste (by name, a sweetmaker) Balram sees his father die in poverty and vows to escape the "Rooster Coop" system that enslaves millions of Indians while others prosper in "the Light."