The 2025 longlist for the Booker Prize, the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction, has been revealed.
This year’s ‘Booker Dozen’ includes 13 brilliant books that encapsulate a vast range of global experiences.
These novels, written by authors representing nine nationalities, will transport you to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate and a small coastal town in Greece. You’ll meet a homesick Indian in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor living in New York, and a shrimp fisherman in the north of England.
The authors shine a light on the lives of Koreans in postcolonial Japan, a mother’s search for a child given up for adoption in Venezuela, and even the plight of 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.
The Booker Prize 2025 longlist
- Love Forms by Claire Adam
- The South by Tash Aw
- Universality by Natasha Brown
- One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
- Flashlight by Susan Choi
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
- Audition by Katie Kitamura
- The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
- The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
- Endling by Maria Reva
- Flesh by David Szalay
- Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
- Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
This year’s longlist is ‘gripping and excellent’ according to the judges, although narrowing it down was tough.
Roddy Doyle, Chair of the Booker Prize 2025 judges, said, “It wasn’t easy; at times, it was agony. There were so many contenders, so many excellent books, saying goodbye to some of them felt personal, almost cruel. But I loved every minute of the experience, and being in the company of my fellow judges.
“I have the 13 longlisted novels on my desk, in a pile. My phone tells me that one meaning of ‘pile’ is ‘a heap of things’. It’s a wonderful heap – I don’t think I’ve seen a better one. At the end of our last, very long meeting, when we’d added the final book to the heap, we all felt relieved, elated – and maybe a bit proud.”
