Booker Prize 2025: Kiran Desai returns with long-awaited follow-up as longlist is revealed

Nearly two decades after her Booker Prize-winning triumph with The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai has re-emerged with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a sweeping 667-page novel that leads this year’s Booker Prize longlist — one of the most hotly anticipated returns to literary fiction in recent memory.

Announced on Tuesday, the 2025 longlist for the prestigious literary award features 13 novels that span continents, cultures and emotional registers — from satire and social commentary to sensual coming-of-age stories and speculative love fables.

Desai’s latest — her first novel in 19 years — charts the lives of two immigrants who return to India and meet on an overnight train. Described by the judging panel as 'a vast and immersive' narrative that layers 'a magical realist fable within a social novel within a love story,' the book is slated for release in late September. The work was long in the making — Desai was reportedly grappling with its themes shortly after winning the prize in 2006 — making her nomination this year feel particularly resonant.

Other notable nominees include:

Katie Kitamura, longlisted for Audition, a taut, elliptical novel in which an actress is confronted by a man claiming to be her son — an exploration of performance and truth.

Susan Choi, whose Flashlight revisits 20th-century Korean history through the lens of a Korean-American family saga that touches on themes including re-education camps and generational trauma.

David Szalay, nominated for Flesh, a slippery, rags-to-riches tale following a Hungarian ex-con as he manoeuvres his way into London’s upper crust.

The longlist showcases a diverse mix of established voices and exciting newcomers, with stories stretching from Trinidad (Love Forms by Claire Adam) and Malaysia (The South by Tash Aw) to Ukraine (Endling by Maria Reva), offering rich commentary on displacement, identity, and connection in a fragmented world.

The 2025 judging panel – which notably includes Booker Prize winning novelist Roddy Doyle and actor/producer Sarah Jessica Parker – will now narrow the field to a six-book shortlist, set to be announced on 23 September. The overall winner, to be revealed in London on 10 November, will receive £50,000.

Last year’s winner, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, turned its gaze skyward with a meditative narrative aboard the International Space Station. This year, the focus returns firmly to Earth – and to the quiet, messy, magical corners of human connection.

Booker Prize 2025 Longlist

Love Forms – Claire Adam

The South – Tash Aw

Universality – Natasha Brown

One Boat – Jonathan Buckley

Flashlight – Susan Choi

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny – Kiran Desai

Audition – Katie Kitamura

The Rest of Our Lives – Benjamin Markovits

The Land in Winter – Andrew Miller

Endling – Maria Reva

Flesh – David Szalay

Seascraper – Benjamin Wood

Misinterpretation – Ledia Xhoga