Most global Booker Prize longlist in a decade leaves judges feeling ‘elated – and maybe a bit proud’

• Love Forms by Claire Adam (author nationality: Trinidadian; UK imprint: Faber)
• The South by Tash Aw (Malaysian; 4th Estate)
• Universality by Natasha Brown (British; Faber)
• One Boat by Jonathan Buckley (British; Fitzcarraldo Editions) 
• Flashlight by Susan Choi (American; Jonathan Cape) 
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Indian; Hamish Hamilton)
• Audition by Katie Kitamura (American; Fern Press)
• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (American; Faber)
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (British; Sceptre)
• Endling by Maria Reva (Canadian-Ukrainian; Virago)
• Flesh by David Szalay (Hungarian-British; Jonathan Cape) 
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (British; Viking)
• Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Albanian-American; Daunt Books Originals)

The longlisted books range in length; four are under 200 pages (Universality by Natasha Brown, One Boat by Jonathan Buckley, Audition by Katie Kitamura, Seascraper by Benjamin Wood), an additional three are under 300 (Love Forms by Claire Adam, The South by Tash Aw, The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits), whilst the longest, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, weighs in at 667 pages.

‘Attending monthly meetings with the 2025 Booker judges has been, quite frankly, more fun than any job deserves to be. The judges are joyous, careful, committed readers with an ear for wit and a knack for listening to each other. In talking about fiction as thoughtfully as they have, they’ve arrived at a longlist that is noteworthy in at least three ways.  

‘First, it champions global perspectives. The stories are set all over the world, and as we looked through the  books we began to notice that their authors, all of them writing in English, had come from many different places too. There was an Indian writer, a Malaysian, a Trinidadian, an Albanian-American, a Hungarian-Briton and a Canadian-Ukrainian… It’s the highest number of different nationalities we’ve seen on a Booker Prize longlist for a decade – yet British writers are strongly represented too. 

‘It’s also striking that most of the longlisted writers have already had sustained careers. There are two debut novelists on the list, yet others have written five books, or 10 or 12 or 13.  

‘The third thing that’s intriguing about this list is that while it includes historical epics, brilliant formal experiments and a compact satire, many of the novels speak to the reader in an unadorned, confiding voice. This intimate effect, so difficult to achieve, was immediately appreciated by the judges, who are as alive to unshowy skills as they are to more virtuosic ones. 

‘And now over to you: I can’t wait to hear the response from readers outside the judging room.’ 

The longlist features authors representing four continents and nine countries: Albania, Canada, Hungary, India, Malaysia, Trinidad and Tobago, the UK, Ukraine and the USA. The list includes Booker Prize alumni, with four titles out of the 13 by previously nominated authors, but comprises a majority of newcomers. 

Kiran Desai, returns to the longlist with her first book since her Booker Prize 2006-winning novel, The Inheritance of Loss. She has spent almost 20 years writing The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Should she win this year, she would become the fifth double winner in the prize’s 56-year history. Desai has family history with the prize: her mother Anita Desai was shortlisted for the Booker three times. 

The South is the third longlisting for Tash Aw (he was also longlisted in 2005 for The Harmony Silk Factory and in 2013 for Five Star Billionaire), who could become the prize’s first Malaysian winner. He is one of two Malaysian novelists to be nominated for the Booker Prize in its history, the other being Tan Twan Eng (another three-time nominee). Aw won the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards First Novel Award for The Harmony Silk Factory and has been called ‘the Malaysian heir to Chekhov’ by The Times. The South was selected by Harper’s Bazaar as a book to pick up in 2025. 

Two other writers on this year’s list have been nominated for the Booker before: Andrew Miller was shortlisted in 2001 for Oxygen, while David Szalay was shortlisted in 2016 for All That Man Is. Miller also won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, in 1997, for Ingenious Pain. The Land in Winter, his 10th novel, was included in the Guardian, the Independent and Good Housekeeping’s best books of 2024 round-ups. Hungarian-British writer Szalay won the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes in 2008 for his first novel, London and the South-East. Flesh, his sixth work of fiction, has been selected as a New York Times, Guardian and Telegraph best books of 2025 and included in the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Sunday Times summer holiday reads features. 

Nine of the authors are longlisted for the Booker Prize for the first time. These authors might be new to the prize, but most are award-winners and all are critically acclaimed:   

• Trinidadian author Claire Adam, who is nominated with her second novel, Love Forms, won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award for her debut, Golden Child, which was named by the BBC as one of the 100 books that have ‘shaped our world’. She studied Physics at Brown University in the US before moving to the UK to pursue a career in writing. Love Forms was included in the Irish Times and the London Standard best books of 2025 round-ups and in the Sunday Times and Marie Claire’s summer reads recommendation features.
   
• Natasha Brown was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023. She is longlisted for Universality, her second novel, which follows her award-winning debut, Assembly – winner of the 2022 Betty Trask award and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, the Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for political fiction. Universality, hailed as ‘an instant classic’ by Elle UK, has been picked as a Radio Times and Independent best book of 2025 so far, and included in the Financial Times best summer reads for 2025. Brown is Chair of judges for the forthcoming International Booker Prize 2025, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction.
   
• Jonathan Buckley was the winner of the BBC Short Story Award in 2015 for ‘Briar Road’, on a shortlist that included stories by Hilary Mantel and Mark Haddon. His 12th book, Tell was the joint winner of the Novel Prize in 2022, a global, biennial award for a book-length work of literary fiction written in English, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Goldsmiths Prize. A writer and editor, Buckley has also written a series of travel guides to Italy. One Boat is his 13th novel.
   
• Susan Choi’s longlisted novel Flashlight, her sixth book, began life as a short story published in The New Yorker, which went on to win the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2021. Choi’s debut novel The Foreign Student won the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction, whilst her second, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her fifth novel, Trust Exercise, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction and was a US bestseller. In 2010, Choi was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award.
   
• Ben Markovits, a former professional basketball player, who has been dubbed by The Spectator as ‘one of America’s premier writers’ won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction in 2016 for You Don’t Have To Live Like This. The Rest of Our Lives is Markovits’ 12^th novel. It was included in The Week’s best novels to read in 2025 and the Financial Times best summer books of 2025 round-ups. The Telegraph claims that Markovits does novels of midlife disappointment ‘arguably better than anyone else’.
   
• Katie Kitamura is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the author of five books, including Audition. Her previous novel Intimacies won France’s Prix Littéraire Lucien Barrière in 2023 and was one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021 as well as one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2021. A writer, art critic and journalist, Kitamura’s work has been translated into 24 languages.
   
• Endling is Maria Reva’s debut novel. Reva, who was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada, was the 2022 recipient of the Kobzar Literary Award for her short story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, for which she was also a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Fiction Prize. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Granta and The Best American Short Stories and she also works as an opera librettist. 
   
• The Sunday Times calls Seascraper author Benjamin Wood ‘one of the finest British novelists of his generation’ that ‘you’ve probably never heard of’ and selected him as a finalist for its Young Writer of the Year Award. The author of five novels, he won France’s prix du roman Fnac in 2014 for his first, The Bellwether Revivals, which was also shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize. His other works have been shortlisted for the Encore Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the European Prize for Literature.
   
• Albanian-American novelist and playwright Ledia Xhoga, who was born and raised in Tirana, Albania and lives in Brooklyn, won the New York City Book Award for her debut novel Misinterpretation, which was also a finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and a best of 2024 book by Debutiful.  

Love Forms by Claire Adam  

‘The divorced Trinidadian mother of two adult men is consumed by the loss of her daughter. Beautifully low-pitched, it reads like a hushed conversation overheard in the next room.’  

The South by Tash Aw   

‘To call The South a coming-of-age novel nearly misses its expanse. Set in 1990s Malaysia, it’s a book about heritage, and the relationship between one family and the land.’ 

Universality by Natasha Brown   

‘A bold, memorable and entertaining satire, it reveals the contradictions of a society shaped by entrenched systems of economic, political and media control.’  

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley  

‘A woman returns to a coastal town in Greece she first visited when her mother died. A novel of quiet brilliance, it raises questions about grief, obsession and human connectivity.’ 

Flashlight by Susan Choi   

‘Deftly criss-crossing decades and continents – from North Korea to America – this is a riveting exploration of identity, hidden truths, race, and national belonging.’ 

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai   

‘Vast and immersive, this novel about a pair of young Indians in America enfolds a magical realist fable within a social novel within a love story. No detail, large or small, escapes Desai’s attention.’ 

Audition by Katie Kitamura  

‘An actress meets a man in a Manhattan restaurant who claims to be her son. This tense scenario established, the narrative makes a radical pivot that left us perplexed and thrilled.’ 

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits  

‘Twelve years after his wife’s affair, Tom drops his daughter off at college – and keeps driving. A satisfying road trip full of strangers, friends and self-discovery, and a novel of sincerity and precision.’ 

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller   

‘In Britain’s coldest winter, two women forge a friendship in the countryside. In beautifully atmospheric prose, Miller brings suspense to a seemingly inconsequential chapter in history.’ 

Endling by Maria Reva   

‘Set in Ukraine as Putin invades, Endling features three women and an endangered snail travelling together in a mobile lab. Structurally wild and playful, it is also heart-rending and angry.’ 

Flesh by David Szalay  

‘Travelling from Hungary to Iraq to London, and using only the sparest of prose, this hypnotically tense and compelling book becomes an astonishingly moving portrait of a man’s life.’
 
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood  

‘What seems to be a beautifully described account of a working day in an English coastal town becomes a book about dreams, an exploration of class and – stunningly – a love story.’ 

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga  

‘The story of a translator saddled between her Albanian past and her New York present, it blurs the distinction between help and harm. We found it propulsive and unsettling.’ 

Further reading on the Booker Prize 2025 judges: 

• Read the full judges’ comments here: ‘What our judges said about the longlist’
• Get to know the Booker Prize 2025 judges  

The Booker Prize, first awarded in 1969, is the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. Authors shortlisted for the prize gain global readerships and an increase in profile and sales, and the winner can expect their career to be transformed. 

The 2024 winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey sold over 20,000 print copies in the UK in the week following its win on 12 November 2024, making it the fastest selling winner of the Booker Prize since records began. It was the bestselling title in the UK that week, topping the Audible audio and Amazon physical and eBook charts. Sales through Waterstones were more than double the volume of each of the last decade’s winners, up 3,000% the day after the announcement. 

The UK publisher of Orbital, Vintage, reprinted 250,000 copies in response to the sales demand following its Booker Prize win and it remained top of the mass market fiction chart for eight consecutive weeks. Total sales of Vintage’s edition of Orbital across all formats and including its export markets and exclusive territories (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India) are now over 700,000. That includes 347,000 copies of the hardback and paperback editions sold in the UK, up 3,756% since the book’s longlisting. Translation rights deals increased from eight before Orbital’s longlisting to a current total of 44 territories.   

• The full judges’ comments, longlisted book synopses and author biographies and images, book jackets and judge images, social media graphics and the prize logo can be downloaded here 
   
• Further reading at thebookerprizes.com  
  ‘Everything you need know about the 2025 longlist’
  ‘What the judges say about the 2025 longlist’
  Interviews with the judges 
   
• The Booker Prizes exist to celebrate the world’s best fiction. The symmetrical relationship between the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize ensures that the Booker honours fiction on a global basis: outstanding fiction is highlighted by the prizes for English-speaking readers, whether that work was originally written in English (the Booker Prize) or translated into English (the International Booker Prize). 
   
• The Booker Prize is the world’s most significant award for a single work of fiction. This year’s judges are looking for the best work of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025.
   
• The International Booker Prize began life in 2005 as a biennial prize for an author to recognise their contribution to world literature, with no stipulation that their body of work should be written in a language other than English. The winners were Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro, Philip Roth, Lydia Davis and László Krasznahorkai.
  
  In 2015, after the rules of the original Booker Prize expanded to allow writers of any nationality to enter – as long as their books were written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland – the International Booker Prize evolved to become the mirror image of the English-language prize. Since then, it has been awarded annually for a work of fiction, written in another language and translated into English. Winning author and translators have included Han Kang and Deborah Smith, Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft, and David Diop and Anna Moschovakis, among many others. 
   
• The website, thebookerprizes.com – supported by Instagram, TikTok, X and Facebook accounts, as well as a YouTube channel and a Substack newsletter – is a unique online space which showcases the exceptional books that have won – or been longlisted or shortlisted for – the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize. The website aims to be an entertaining and illuminating content destination that combines both practical information about the prizes past and present with fresh and original features to bring the books and their authors to life, including an ongoing Monthly Spotlight series, encouraging readers new and old to visit and revisit titles in the ‘Booker Library’.
   
• The key Booker Prize 2025 judging meetings have been generously hosted by Fortnum & Mason at its flagship London Picadilly store. 
  
  Fortnum & Mason is essential for anyone in search of extraordinary food, joy-giving things, unforgettable experiences, and exceptional service. First founded in London in 1707, after Queen Anne gave her footman William Fortnum permission to sell on discarded candles from St James’s Palace, Fortnum’s has forged a close relationship with the British Royal household ever since. Fortnum & Mason has held several warrants throughout its history, including one from Her late Majesty, The Queen and HM The King, when Prince of Wales.
  
  A London retail institution and pioneer in the hospitality sector, innovation has always been a central pillar at Fortnum’s. From inventing the Scotch Egg and providing supplies to the 1922 Everest expedition, to beekeeping in Piccadilly’s rooftop hives and launching the Food & Drink Awards to celebrate people and talent, Fortnum’s has been a trusted disruptor and authority in the food & drink space, at home and internationally, from the very beginning.
  
  Every year, millions of people from around the world visit the Piccadilly flagship to enjoy Fortnum’s famous Afternoon Tea and shop its extraordinary food, gift and fragrance halls. The iconic brand is celebrated for its teas, Scotch eggs, hand-made chocolates, and wicker hampers – each of which play a large part in its centuries of history – and today remains committed to imagination and discovery.
  Proud of its storied past and innovating still, Fortnum’s mission remains to make joy for every customer, whether they’re shopping in-store or from around the world at the award-winning www.fortnumandmason.com. Follow Fortnum’s on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and TikTok (@fortnums)
   
• The Booker Prize Book Club is a dedicated online community with over 27,000 members from all over the world, who come together to find out more about and discuss the year’s nominated titles, as well as the almost 700 titles in the Booker Library.
   
• The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity (no 1090049) established in 2002. Its purpose is to inspire people to read the world’s best fiction. It is driven by a simple belief – that great fiction not only brings joy to millions, it has the power to change the way we think about the world. It is responsible for awarding the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize. Other aspects of the Foundation’s work include the funding of Braille and audio editions of Booker Prize books through the RNIB, the annual UEA Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship and Books Unlocked, a long-standing reading initiative in prisons. Last year, the award-winning singer-songwriter Dua Lipa visited HMP Downview to join a Books Unlocked reading group. Watch the film made during that visit here. 
   
• Crankstart, a charitable foundation, is the exclusive funder of the Booker Prizes.   
   
• Booker Group Ltd, which sponsored the prize from 1969 to 2001, is the UK’s leading food & drink wholesaler. The Booker Prizes license their name from Booker Ltd, and Helen Williams, a representative from Booker, sits on the Advisory Committee.