This year’s Booker Prize shortlist features an epic globetrotting love story between two young Indians; a man in the throws of a midlife crisis who undertakes a road trip across the US; a successful actor whose life is thrown into dissary by the appearance of a man who may or may not be who he says he is; the impact of an East Asian immigrant’s mysterious disappearance in the US on his wife and daughter; the story of two couples struggling with the legacy of the second world war in rural England; and the rags-to-riches story of a man born in a housing estate in central Europe who ends up in the mansions of London’s super rich.
Established authors dominate this year’s shortlist with half of the nominees – Kiran Desai, David Szalay and Andrew Miller – having all been shortlisted previously. Desai won the Booker in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss while Miller was nominated in 2001 for his novel Oxygen. Szalay was nominated in 2016 for his novel All That Man Is.
This year, Miller is nominated for his book The Land in Winter, Szalay for Flesh and Desai for her novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. The other three shortlisted authors are Ben Markovits for The Rest of Our Lives, Katie Kitamura for her fifth book Audition and Susan Choi for her novel Flashlight.
No Irish novelists made it to this year’s shortlist but the judge’s panel was chaired by Irish author Roddy Doyle, who won the prize in 1993 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. The other judges were novelists Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Kiley Reid, actor and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker and critic Chris Power.
READ MORE
Booker Prize 2025 shortlist
- 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
- Flesh by David Szalay
Half of this year’s nominated authors are Americans – Choi, Kitamura and Markovits – which remains a bone of contention for some. In the 12 years since US authors have been eligible they have taken 27 of the 72 shortlist places but only won twice. While this year’s other shortlisted authors are Hungarian-British author Szalay, Indian author Desai and British author Miller.
Should Desai win, she would be the fifth person to win the prize twice and it would mean that India would complete an unprecedented sweep of 2025’s Booker prizes, after Indian author Banu Mushtaq and her translator Deeoa Bhasthi won the International Booker Prize earlier this year for their short-story collection Heart Lamp. In 2015, the Economic Times listed Desai as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.
Choi’s novels have received much recognition over the course of her literary career. She was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize for fiction for her 2003 novel American Woman and a finalist for the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2013 Choi received a Lambda Literary Award for her fourth novel, My education, and her fifth novel became a US bestseller, winning the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.
Kitamura is best known for her 2021 novel Intimacies which was selected as one of the New York Times’ 10 best books of 2021 and was longlisted for the National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award. Kitamura’s book Audition, shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, is currently being adapted into a film by Lulu Wang starring actor Lucy Liu.
Szalay’s debut novel, London and the South-East, won the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes while his 2016 book, All That Man Is, was nominated for the Booker and won the Gordon Burn and Plimpton prizes for fiction. He has also written several BBC Radio 4 Dramas, most notably the collection of short stories Turbulence.
Markovits is a former professional basketball player who is best known for his novel the You Don’t Have to Live like This which won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2016. Markovits was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013 and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. He currently teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway University of London and continues to publish essays, stories, poetry and reviews in publications such as the Guardian and New York Times.
Miller, a journalist and author, is best known for his acclaimed historical novels. His debut novel Ingenious Pain, about an 18th century Englishman born without the ability to feel pain or pleasure, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction and the International Dublin Literary Award. He also won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011 for Pure, a novel set in 18th century Paris. Miller has worked as a residential social worker and has a black belt in aikido.
“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,” judge Roddy Doyle said.
“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.”
The judges will now read the shortlisted works for a third time and the winner of the £50,000 prize will be revealed at a ceremony in London on November 10th.
