Today, Tuesday, 23rd September, the 2025 shortlist for the Booker Prize, the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction, was announced at London Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall.

During the evening event the judges, in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation Chief Executive Gaby Wood, revealed what it is like to judge one of the world’s most significant literary awards, and why each book earned its place on the 2025 shortlist. The event also featured actors Louise Brealey (Sherlock, Back, Such Brave Girls) and Alfred Enoch (Harry Potter films, How to Get Away with Murder, The Couple Next Door) reading unpublished judges’ correspondence from the Booker Prize archive, as well as excerpts from the shortlisted books. The event was livestreamed on the Southbank Centre’s website and can be watched here for the next week.

The 2025 Booker Prize Judges

The shortlist of six books has been selected by the 2025 judging panel, chaired by critically acclaimed writer and 1993 Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle. Doyle, who is the first Booker Prize winner to chair a Booker judging panel, is joined by Booker Prize-longlisted novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; award-winning actor, producer and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker; writer, broadcaster and literary critic Chris Power; and New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author Kiley Reid.

Featuring both classical storytelling and novels that push the boundaries of narrative form, the shortlist is preoccupied with the ties that bind families together. The characters navigate familiar domestic situations: the power dynamic shifts between parents and their children, marriages come adrift, families reckon with the weight of their own history, and individuals perform the roles others expect them to play. Together, the shortlisted books transport readers from Hungary to Japan, from Italy to the US, from India to England, and feature often rootless characters far from the places they once called home. The books take place over vastly differing time spans: some over the course of just a few days or weeks; others over several decades.

Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize 2025 Chair of Judges, commented: "Re-reading all 13 books on the longlist was a huge pleasure; I was feeling the excitement, the joy I’ve felt since I started reading books with no pictures in them 60 years ago. As judges, we could re-examine, savour and admire them without having to worry about the boxes of unread novels that were waiting to trip us every time we got up to fill the kettle. Some books seemed to grow. Others remained excellent, exactly as we’d left them.

"Pleasure stopped about halfway through the meeting to decide the shortlist. We continued to laugh, to listen to one another, to shuffle the remaining books, seeing similarities and differences, strengths and uniqueness. But in whittling the 13 down to six, there was sadness, even guilt at losing books we loved. But also satisfaction and gratitude: we had chosen six great novels.

"The six have, I think, 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. 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 Booker Prize 2025 Shortlist is:

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 

The prize has rewarded and celebrated world-class talent for over 50 years, shaping the canon of 20th and 21st century literature. This year’s selection, which was chosen from ‘the Booker Dozen’ of 13 titles, selected from 153 submissions, celebrates the best works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1st October 2024 and 30th September 2025. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500, a specially bound edition of their book, and gain global readerships and an increase in profile and sales.

The Booker Prize 2025 ceremony will take place on the evening of Monday, 10th November at Old Billingsgate in London and will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts programme Front Row at 9.30pm.

The ceremony will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes' social channels. The winner will receive £50,000, a trophy named Iris (after 1978 winner Iris Murdoch) and can expect their career to be transformed.

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, added:

"Over time, the Booker Prize has rewarded debut authors, authors developing their late style and authors at many stages in between – all writing world-class fiction. It is striking that the writers on this year’s powerful shortlist have spent decades honing their craft. They are already much loved by readers and critics, writers of enormous commitment, curiosity and skill. It’s a pleasure to see their latest books added to the almost 700 in the Booker Library.

"Behind the scenes (as I hope readers witnessed during the shortlist announcement event at the Royal Festival Hall), the 2025 Booker judges have been fantastic company – for each other and for the books. They have undertaken the task of reading 153 novels – and re-reading their 13-strong longlist – with warmth, humour and very high standards. They are a stellar group: easy to be around and hard to impress. All of the authors nominated this year should feel very proud."

In early October, ahead of the Booker Prize 2025 winner announcement, the Booker Prize Foundation will release a series of short films featuring high-profile actors performing extracts from the shortlisted books. The Foundation has created the series of six two-minute films for its two annual prizes since 2022. The films, released in spring and autumn, have become one of the highlights of the Booker Prizes seasons, with the 2024 films viewed online more than 83 million times. They can be viewed here.

Details of all Booker Prize events can be found at www.thebookerprizes.com

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