Discover our reading guides for the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist of six books, displayed artfully on a desk

Discover our reading guides for the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

Published: September 23, 2025

Whether you’re new to the shortlist and wondering where to start, or would like to explore it more deeply, our guides are packed with insights and discussion points

The winner of the Booker Prize 2025 will be announced on Monday, 10 November at a ceremony in London, and the winning author will receive £50,000.

Reading guide: Flashlight by Susan Choi

Thrilling and moving, Flashlight mines questions of memory, language and identity through the astonishing story of a family swept up in the tides of 20th-century history

Reading guide: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years – an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity

Reading guide: Audition by Katie Kitamura

An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love

Reading guide: The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

An unforgettable road trip of a novel about a middle-aged academic whose marriage, career and body are failing him

Reading guide: The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

An atmospheric novel set during a famously freezing 1960s winter, The Land in Winter explores the minutiae of married life through the interior lives of two couples

Reading guide: Flesh by David Szalay

Flesh is the winner of the Booker Prize 2025. A spare but propulsive novel, Flesh follows a man from adolescence to old age as he is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp

Read more on the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

Group photo of Chris Power, Kiley Reid, Roddy Doyle, Sarah Jessica Parker and Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist: what our judges said

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlistees, photographed at Southbank Centre, London

Read interviews with the authors shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist of six books, displayed artfully across a stool and radiator

Read extracts from the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist of six books, displayed artfully on a bookshelf

Buy the Booker Prize 2025 shortlist

Save nearly 30% when you buy all six Booker Prize shortlisted books for the special price of £75 from BookKind. Receive fast and free UK shipping; international shipping rates apply. Plus, 10% of the value of your purchase will be donated to the Booker Prize Foundation, helping fund our work to support readers and writers of the future.