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With neither a debut nor even a second novel in sight, the shortlist for the 2025 Booker Prize for fiction features six established names with proven literary clout. The youngest author is 46; four are in their fifties, and all but one have published five or more books. The exception is a former winner of the prize whose latest novel was 20 years in the making.
Expansive in theme, place and scope, the novels range from 1950s Japan to 21st-century India, via Hungary, England and America. Roddy Doyle, chair of this year’s panel of judges and the first former Booker winner to perform that role, characterised the shortlisted works as “brilliantly human”. “They all follow the human in the stories”, said Doyle, who won the prize in 1993 with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.
The shortlisted books are: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, a near-700-page epic tale of the thwarted relationship between two young Indians; The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, set in England’s “Big Freeze” of 1962-63; Flesh by David Szalay, a whole-life story of a Hungarian man’s migration and changing fortunes; Audition by Katie Kitamura, which explores performance and reality through an actress-protagonist; Flashlight by Susan Choi, a generational saga of the Japanese-Korean diaspora; and The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, a mid-life road trip across the US.
Desai won the Man Booker, as the prize was then called, in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss, while Miller and Szalay were shortlisted in 2001 and 2016 respectively.
Asked whether the panel had noted fewer works that overtly engage with current sociopolitical concerns, Doyle countered: “You can make the case that they do address political issues,” specifying that migration and class are big themes in several of the stories. Chris Power, a fellow judge alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Kiley Reid and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, added that the books “cover a huge array of writing styles and approaches to fiction”.
For the first time this year’s shortlist was announced at a public event, at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday. Underscoring the dominance of international conglomerates in the industry, imprints owned by Penguin Random House published four of the six books. Of the authors, three are American, one British, one Hungarian-British and one Indian. The prestigious prize is open to all fiction in English, regardless of the author’s nationality.
The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced on November 10 at a ceremony in London.
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