Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist Announced: Six Powerful Novels Explore Love, Loss, Identity and Human Connection
The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist has been revealed, showcasing six powerful novels that span continents, decades and generations -- united by a deep exploration of what it means to live, to love, and to endure.
The final six were selected from 153 submissions by a panel chaired by 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle, alongside judges Ayแป̀bรกmi Adรฉbรกyแป̀, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power, and Kiley Reid.
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| The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist © Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation |
The 2025 list is marked by mature, technically confident storytelling and a range of narratives that, in the words of Doyle, are “brilliantly written and brilliantly human.”
The six books delve into themes of migration, loneliness, shifting family dynamics and the emotional burden of identity.
Set across diverse locations -- from Hungary to Japan, India to England’s West Country, and New York to rural Italy -- these novels reflect both the personal and the political in their portrayal of contemporary life.
Just announced, the #BookerPrize2025 Shortlist is here! Novels that transport the reader around the world, or hole them up in wintry isolation, share entire lifetimes or a single encounter. This is fiction worth talking about. Discover them all here:https://t.co/g6ay9IJAeH pic.twitter.com/3zUjZZi1i1
— Waterstones (@Waterstones) September 23, 2025
Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny marks her return to the Booker spotlight nearly two decades after her win for The Inheritance of Loss.
Her latest novel is a sweeping, multi-generational exploration of migration and belonging, with Indian protagonists whose experiences in America mirror wider themes of displacement and cultural memory.
In Flashlight, Susan Choi creates an expansive narrative born from a compact short story, chronicling the emotional fallout of a father’s disappearance.
Through war, migration and fractured families, the novel examines the ways personal trauma intersects with geopolitical forces.
Katie Kitamura’s Audition is a psychological drama that blurs reality and performance in the life of a Broadway actress, mirroring the performative nature of modern identity. Its ambiguity and emotional restraint are central to its power.
We're thrilled to announce that Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize! pic.twitter.com/W3Vgq0wZj2
— Europa Editions (@EuropaEditions) September 23, 2025
Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives follows a middle-aged father on a road trip across America after his children leave home.
It is both a tender portrait of midlife reckoning and an incisive look at familial alienation, illness and masculine vulnerability.
Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter transports readers to a snowbound 1960s English village, where two marriages unravel against the backdrop of the coldest winter in memory. It’s a study in emotional isolation and the small moments that define our relationships.
✨ 'The very best of traditional literary fiction. . . We loved it. You: read it.' The Times
— Faber Books (@FaberBooks) September 23, 2025
We are so thrilled that The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. Huge congratulations to Ben and all the fellow shortlistees ๐ pic.twitter.com/4HoirHxgyV
David Szalay’s Flesh traces a Hungarian man’s emotional detachment and rise through class strata from Eastern Europe to London. Sparse yet searing, the novel investigates masculinity, social mobility, and the cost of personal reinvention.
We are delighted to reveal that The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai has made the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist.
— Viking Books UK (@VikingBooksUK) September 23, 2025
We couldn't be more thrilled!
We also want to shout out fellow longlisted author, Benjamin Wood for his wonderful book Seascraper.#BookerPrize2025 pic.twitter.com/GyjBqfVz5T
The shortlist captures characters in flux -- rootless, grieving, reaching for connection — in stories set across short time spans or entire lifetimes. Marriages fracture (Flashlight, The Land in Winter), children drift from their parents (The Rest of Our Lives, Audition), and history weighs heavily on personal choices (Flesh, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny).
With no debut authors featured, the shortlist reflects the experience and authority of writers at the height of their literary power. Collectively, they’ve published 41 adult novels. Desai’s 700-page epic took two decades to complete; Markovits, a former pro basketball player, has published eleven.
The Booker Prize remains one of the literary world’s most prestigious accolades. Each shortlisted author receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their novel. The winner — to be announced in London on 10 November — will be awarded £50,000.
2025 Booker Prize Shortlist:
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Flashlight by Susan Choi
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The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
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Audition by Katie Kitamura
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The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
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The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
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Flesh by David Szalay