May We Feed the King

A curator is absorbed in the medieval world of a reluctant monarch in this searing debut about what becomes lost over time and what devotion can reanimate. A curator spends her days reconstructing the past—selecting and carefully arranging furniture, fabrics, and replica food to bring medieval rooms back to life. Whether it’s a feast with spilling platters or a table for two littered with small hints of intimacy, it must appear as if the people have just left the room. After accepting a commission to work on the private quarters of a medieval palace, the curator becomes absorbed in the story of a king almost forgotten by history. As she studies the traces he left behind, the boundary between her own life and his begins to blur. The King is an unlikely ruler: a man with little appetite for power, hurried to the throne after the sudden deaths of his brothers. At court, doubts about his judgment are whispered from chamber to chamber. Then an unthinkable possibility emerges among the gossip: maybe someone else will take the crown.

Prize history

• Booker Prize 2026 Shortlist

Reviews

• The New York Times · 28 Sept 2026

  Book Review: ‘May We Feed the King,’ by Rebecca Perry

  In Rebecca Perry’s “May We Feed the King,” a curator falls down a rabbit hole imagining life in a palace court.

  Lauren Elkin