Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025 longlist

Around the world in 13 novels 

The list, which features seven women and six men, includes five authors who identify as British or joint British (including one who identifies as Hungarian-British) and four who identify as American or joint American (including one who identifies as Albanian-American). Last year’s longlist featured six Americans and three Brits. Two Americans have won the Booker since the prize was opened up to authors of all nationalities in 2014. 

Claire Adam has an opportunity to become the second Trinidad-born winner, after V.S. Naipaul won in 1971. Ledia Xhoga wouldn’t be the first Albania-born author to win a Booker Prize – Ismail Kadare won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005. David Szalay, who identifies as Hungarian-British, follows in the Booker footsteps of Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. 

So what are the books about? 

The nominated novels encapsulate a vast range of international experiences. Arguably more than any other year in the prize’s history, this year’s longlist boasts a truly global outlook. 

The longlisted books transport readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate and a small coastal town in Greece. They shine a light on the lives of Koreans in postcolonial Japan, a homesick Indian in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor living in New York, a shrimp fisherman in the north of England, a mother whose child was given up for adoption in Venezuela and even 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. 

There’s a novel that began life as a short story in the New Yorker, one that was almost 20 years in the making and another that’s the first book in a proposed quartet. There are books that explore modern masculinity in its many forms, the intense bonds between mothers and children, and the multiple ways in which country, class, race and history shape people’s lives. 

There are books here that are playful and expansive, sweeping and intimate; that stir up long-held secrets, painful memories and unsolved mysteries; that present us with characters on a journey to escape or confront their pasts, or performing roles they have created or that have been foisted upon them. There are books that are quietly devastating and darkly comic; that provide powerful meditations on love, guilt and responsibility; and that cast a satirical eye on the media and identity politics.  

…And publishers, too 

Once again, some of Britain’s best-known publishers are well-represented this year, especially Penguin Random House, with five books nominated across four of its imprints: Viking, Hamish Hamilton, Fern Press (nominated for the first time) and Jonathan Cape. The latter boasts two nominees in 2025 – David Szalay’s Flesh and Susan Choi’s Flashlight. Cape has published nine previous Booker winners, including 2024’s winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey. 

Five books on the list are published by indies, including three published by Faber – Claire Adam’s Love Forms, Natasha Brown’s Universality and Ben Markovits’s The Rest of Our Lives. Faber has published six previous Booker winners, most recently Anna Burns’ Milkman, in 2018. 

Daunt Books Originals (publishers of Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation) is longlisted for the second year running, while Fitzcarraldo Editions (publishers of One Boat by Jonathan Buckley) is longlisted for the Booker for the first time, having been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 16 times in the past decade. 

But it’s not all about books – many of the longlistees have careers and interests far beyond novel-writing. Katie Kitamura trained as a ballerina and also works as an art critic, while Natasha Brown spent a decade working in financial services, after studying mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Maria Reva is also an opera librettist, Jonathan Buckley is the author of a series of travel guides to Italy, while Ledia Xhoga has achieved success as a playwright. Tash Aw has worked as an auction-house porter, a paralegal and a Chinese language tutor, while Andrew Miller has a black belt in aikido, is a keen sailor and plays the mandolin in a folk band. After college, Ben Markovitz was a professional basketball player in Landshut, Germany.