Just last week, judges of the Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, announced their six shortlisted books. This year seems to have been a dire one for the judges, with the chair of the panel—previous prize-winner Roddy Doyle—“lamenting,” as the Times report, the “poor quality of entries.” If you don’t want to read all six before the winner is announced on 10 November, we understand—instead, let us be your guide to the 2025 shortlist.
The 2025 shortlist’s apparent focus on humanity and human connection is evident in Katie Kitamura’s Audition. A book that asks the question: Can we ever really know the people we love? However, judge Ellen Wiles has already said that it “fails to match the drama of [her] previous novel.”
Previous Booker prize-winner Kiran Desai is back with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a story that unpacks fate and the relationship between India and America, tradition and modernity. Despite being a past winner, Desai seems less in the judges’ favour as Andrew Miller, a multi-award-winning author whose shortlisted novel The Land in Winter takes its reader to the blessed English Westcountry. Before you dive into this one, however, note that the panel have called it “utterly bleak” with a “desolate distressing ending.” If that sounds like your taste, eat up.
For a story about a man realising his age and taking a road trip to visit past faces and process past loves, we would recommend… 1989 Booker winner, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Or, for what appears to be the same story in an American setting, you can also check out Ben Markovitz’s shortlisted The Rest of Our Lives. Judge Alex Preston writes that it “lays bare the way time calcifies out failures.” Wait, which novel is that about?
Without a doubt though, our two picks for the potential prize are David Szalay’s The Flesh, and Susan Choi’s Flashlight. The Flesh focuses on the evolution of a man in Hungary and the contemplation of his life, called a “moving work of art.” Flashlight focuses on the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, America, and the North Korean regime, described as “allergic to genre” and a definite potential winner.
But who are we to say? The winner will be announced on 10 November, and until then, it is any author’s game.
Image by Summer Rune on Unsplash