By Yulia Tulegenova
The judges have spoken. After sorting through 153 books over seven months, the panel for the 2025 Booker Prize has unveiled its longlist of 13 novels. The selection, chaired by the Irish writer Roddy Doyle, is a fascinating snapshot of the contemporary novel, offering a globe-spanning tour of fiction that feels both immediate and expansive.
The panel itself, which included actor Sarah Jessica Parker and authors Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Kiley Reid, seems to have prioritized stories that connect private lives to public histories. Doyle noted that the chosen books "examine the past and poke at our shaky present," a sentiment that echoes through the entire list. The result is a collection of works that feel less like isolated artistic statements and more like parts of a global conversation.
A List of Journeys and Reckonings
Perhaps the most striking thing about this year’s list is its geographic and thematic breadth. The settings carry readers from a struggling farm in rural Malaysia and the bitter cold of the 1962 British winter to the fraught world of a Kosovar torture survivor in New York.
This is a list that celebrates sustained careers alongside new voices. Kiran Desai, who won the prize nearly two decades ago for The Inheritance of Loss, returns with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a sweeping love story that unfolds between India and Vermont. She is joined by past shortlistees like Andrew Miller (The Land in Winter) and David Szalay (Flesh), both of whom offer stark, penetrating looks at English and European life.
At the same time, the judges made room for two debuts. Maria Reva’s Endling takes on the war in Ukraine through the eyes of a biologist hunting for endangered snails, while Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation explores the complex role of an Albanian interpreter in New York. Both signal the arrival of formidable new talents.
The Contenders at a Glance
The thirteen novels offer a wide array of narrative approaches.
Some are epic in scope. Tash Aw’s The South begins what is planned as a four-part series about love and change in Malaysia. Susan Choi’s Flashlight is a multi-generational saga tracing the legacy of post-colonial history through a family with roots in Korea, Japan, and the United States.
Others are tightly focused, finding drama in the intimate spaces of human relationships. Claire Adam’s Love Forms centers on a mother’s search for the child she gave up in Venezuela, while Ben Markovits’s The Rest of Our Lives turns a cross-country road trip into a quiet reckoning with a fading marriage. In Audition, Katie Kitamura constructs a taut, psychological puzzle around an actress and a young man who claims to be her son.
There are also novels of intense atmosphere. Benjamin Wood’s Seascraper grounds the reader in the mud and salt of England’s northern coast, where a young shrimp fisherman dreams of another life. Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter uses the claustrophobia of a historic blizzard to force long-buried secrets to the surface.
The list is rounded out by works of formal daring. Natasha Brown’s Universality is a sharp satire on media and class in modern Britain, and David Szalay’s Flesh tells one man's story by almost entirely refusing to grant access to his inner life - a stark portrait of alienation. Jonathan Buckley’s One Boat is a philosophical exploration of grief on a small Greek island, and Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation cleverly uses the gaps in translation to reflect a deeper human disconnect.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 23, with the winner revealed on November 10. For now, readers have a formidable, and deeply rewarding, challenge ahead of them.
