The 2025 Booker Prize Longlist has been announced!
“The ‘Booker Dozen’ features five British authors, while also encapsulating a vast range of global experiences. The 13 novels transport readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate and a small coastal town in Greece. They shine a light on the lives of Koreans in postcolonial Japan, a homesick Indian in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor living in New York, a shrimp fisherman in the north of England, a mother’s search for a child given up for adoption in Venezuela and even endangered snails in contemporary Ukraine. They reimagine the great American road trip as a slow-burning mid-life crisis and take us into the heart of the UK’s coldest winter.”
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2025
https://thebookerprizes.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-booker-prize-2025-longlist
| Introducing the Booker Prize 2025 Longlist! | ||
|---|---|---|
| Claire Adam | Love Forms | In this heart-aching novel, a mother searches for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago. |
| Tash Aw | The South | A radiant novel of the longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer – about family, desire, and what we inherit. |
| Natasha Brown | Universality | An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding a vicious attack, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers. |
| Jonathan Buckley | One Boat | On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago, and grapples with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility. |
| Susan Choi | Flashlight | Flashlight moves between the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, to suburban America, and the North Korean regime, to tell the astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of 20th-century history. |
| Kiran Desai | The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny | The sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. |
| Katie Kitamura | Audition | Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young – young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? |
| Ben Markovits | The Rest of Our Lives | An unforgettable road trip of a novel about getting older, and the challenges of long-term marriage. |
| Andrew Millar | The Land in Winter | When the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, two couples find their lives beginning to unravel. Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to? |
| Maria Reva | Endling | An unforgettable debut novel about the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine. |
| David Szalay | Flesh | A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. |
| Benjamin Wood | Seascraper | A mesmerising portrait of a young man confined by his class and the ghosts of his family’s past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment. |
| Ledia Xhoga | Misinterpretation | Ledia Xhoga’s ruminative debut novel interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation. |
The Booker Prize is a prestigious literary award presented annually for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK or Ireland. Established in 1969, the prize aims to recognize outstanding fiction and has become one of the most influential and celebrated literary honours in the English-speaking world. It is awarded by a panel of judges chosen for their literary expertise, and winning or even being shortlisted can significantly boost a book’s visibility and sales. The prize was formerly known as the Man Booker Prize until 2019.
The 2025 Booker Prize judging panel is chaired by Roddy Doyle, one of Ireland’s most acclaimed and prolific writers. His works often focus on working-class life in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, with a mix of humour and exploration of social and cultural issues. His novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays have been translated into over 40 languages. His novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the Booker Prize in 1993.
He is joined by:
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, a Nigerian author best known for her critically acclaimed debut novel Stay With Me, which was longlisted for the 2017 Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is widely regarded for her nuanced portrayal of modern Nigerian life and the emotional experiences of women in contemporary Africa. Her novel A Spell of Good Things was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023.
Kiley Reid, an American author who became an international sensation with her debut novel Such a Fun Age – which was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. She has written for The New York Times, Vogue, and The Cut, and her work touches on contemporary themes around race, identity, and social class.
Chris Power, a British writer, broadcaster, and literary critic best known for his debut novel A Lonely Man. He regularly chairs literary events and has taught writing in various capacities, including on the MA in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Sarah Jessica Parker, award‑winning actor, producer, and publisher. She has long been a passionate advocate for literature, and is the founder of SJP Lit. Her goal with the imprint is to highlight fresh, diverse voices, as well as novels that might otherwise slip under the radar. She has worked with various literary festivals, participated in literary events, and been an outspoken advocate for books and reading, showcasing her commitment to literature beyond celebrity status.
Together, these five judges offer a wide array of perspectives that reflect the diversity of the contemporary literary landscape. Their backgrounds cover multiple continents, a variety of genres, and expertise in both writing and criticism.
To read more about the Booker Prize, and this year’s judging panel, visit: https://thebookerprizes.com
The shortlist of six books will be announced on 23 September. The winner of the Booker Prize 2025 will be announced on 10 November, with the winner receiving £50,000, as well as the £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.
| Booker Prize Winners | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Samantha Harvey | Orbital | Six astronauts rotate in the International Space Station. They are there to do vital work, but slowly they begin to wonder: what is life without Earth? What is Earth without humanity? Together, as they travel at speeds of over 17,000 miles per hour, they watch their silent blue planet, circling it 16 times in a single day, spinning past continents, and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. |
| 2023 | Paul Lynch | Prophet Song | Exhilarating, terrifying and propulsive, Prophet Song is a work of breathtaking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together. |
| 2022 | Shehan Karunatilaka | The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida | A photographer in the afterlife sets out to expose the carnage of Sri Lanka's civil wars. He has ‘seven moons’ to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka. |
| 2021 | Damon Galgut | The Promise | On their farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral. The younger generation detests everything the family stands for, not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land, yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. |
