2025 Booker Prize Shortlist dominated by literary veterans

The shortlist for the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction has been announced, featuring six established authors with substantial literary careers. This year, 153 submissions were received for the prestigious Booker Prize. The Shortlist excludes debut or second novels, opting instead for seasoned writers; the youngest author is 46, four are in their fifties, and all but one have published at least five books. The exception is former prize-winner Kiran Desai, whose latest novel took twenty years to complete.

The shortlisted works are expansive in scope, theme, and location, with settings ranging from 1950s Japan to contemporary India, and traversing Hungary, England, and America. 

Roddy Doyle, chair of the Booker Prize 2025 judges and the first former Booker winner to hold the role, was joined on the panel by Sarah Jessica Parker, Kiley Reid, Chris Power, and Ayobami Adebayo. 

The six novels that made it to the Shortlist include Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — a nearly 700-page work detailing the complex relationship between two young Indians; Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter set during the English winter of 1962–63; David Szalay’s Flesh which charts the life and changing fortunes of a Hungarian migrant; Katie Kitamura’s Audition, exploring performance and reality through an actress protagonist; Susan Choi’s Flashlight — a generational saga of the Japanese-Korean diaspora; and Ben Markovits’s The Rest of Our Lives, a mid-life road trip across the US. 

Desai previously won the prize in 2006, while Miller and Szalay were shortlisted in 2001 and 2016, respectively.

Doyle remarked, "The six [shortlisted books] have two big things in common. Their authors are in total command of their own store of English, their own rhythm, their own expertise; they have each crafted a novel that no one else could have written. And all of the books, in six different and very fresh ways, find their stories in the examination of the individual trying to live with – to love, to seek attention from, to cope with, to understand, to keep at bay, to tolerate, to escape from – other people. In other words, they are all brilliantly written and they are all brilliantly human."

For the first time, the shortlist was revealed at a public event, held on 23 September at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The influence of international publishing is evident, with imprints owned by Penguin Random House publishing four of the six books. 

The winner of the GBP 50,000 prize will be announced at a ceremony in London on 10 November.