The Booker Prize shortlist has been revealed ahead of the winners' announcement on November 10 2025.
Revealed on Tuesday, the 2025 shortlist for the prestigious literary award has trimmed down the thirteen-strong longlist down to just six contenders for this year's prize. The selection spans continents, cultures and emotional registers.
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 shortlist – one of the most hotly anticipated returns to literary fiction in recent memory.
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.
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.
Elsewhere, the shortlist is comprised largely of established names, with most of the emerging voices on the longlist being cut. Notably, half the list is also American.
The 2025 judging panel – which notably includes Booker Prize winning novelist Roddy Doyle and actor/producer Sarah Jessica Parker – will now have the tough task of selecting this year's winner. Their decision will be revealed in London on 10 November with the winner receiving £50,000.
The Booker Prize 2025 judges
Choi’s sixth book begins with a young girl walking along the beach with her father, only to wake up alone with him missing and thought to have drowned. The narrative then shifts across time and continents – from Japan to the US and North Korea – as she tries to understand what happened.
The judges said: 'it's a family drama and geopolitical thriller about a fascinating episode from history", adding: 'This is one of those books that completely dominates your thoughts.
Nearly two decades after winning the Booker with The Inheritance of Loss, Desai returns with a 650-page saga. The novel follows two Indian writers living in America whose chance reunion on an overnight train opens into a sweeping meditation on love, family, and identity.
The judges said: "an intimate and expansive epic about two people finding a pathway to love and each other", adding: "Rich in meditations about class, race and nationhood, this book has it all."
In Kitamura’s fifth novel, the narrator – an actress – encounters a man who insists he is her son. The story unfolds through shifting perspectives, exploring blurred boundaries between performance and truth. A film adaptation starring Lucy Liu is already in the works from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company.
The judges said: "a brilliantly tense, taut novel that sees an actress's life turned inside out and leaves a lot open to interpretation", adding: "What's real? Audition makes existential detectives of us all."
Markovits’ twelfth novel centres on a man who, after leaving his daughter at university, walks away from his marriage and embarks on a road trip. The UK-based American author – once a professional basketball player in Germany – turns this journey into a meditation on change and loss.
The judges said: 'A road trip chronicle, a book about sickness, a basketball novel, a family saga, and a story about how we say goodbye, with a ridiculously relatable narrator.'
Miller, last shortlisted in 2001 for Oxygen, returns with a novel set in the West Country during the brutal winter of 1962. It follows the unraveling lives of two couples, both expecting children, as the storm forces hidden tensions to the surface.
The judges said: 'A novel about how to live, and about the tensions within marriages, set against the most dramatic winter in living memory. It's a joy to read, a nerve-shredding pleasure.'
Szalay’s sixth novel traces the life of a withdrawn teenager from a Hungarian estate who finds work as a driver and bodyguard for London’s super-rich. The story follows his unlikely rise while exploring his detachment from desire and the world around him.
The judges said: 'A novel about class ascension and a man who is remarkably detached from his desires, and a disquisition on the art of being alive. It is also an absolute page-turner.'
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
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