The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist: what our judges said

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai 

How would you summarise this book in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up? 

At its heart, this book is about Sonia and Sunny’s love, but it is also an expansive novel that encompasses several other characters and concerns. It is an intimate story about two people finding a pathway to love and each other. Read it if you are looking for a truly unforgettable epic, one rich in meditations about class, race, nationhood and the titular loneliness. 

Is there something unique about this book?  

One of the reasons why this book stands out is that it has so much going on, many characters, subplots and places. Yet all of it is woven together into one magnificent story.  

What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love?  

Its rich intricacies and the sheer bounty each page offers. Inter-generational family saga, sharp humour, poignant love story, state-of-the-nation novel, this book has it all. As a result, reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is an immersive, wonderful experience. 

Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?  

There’s Sonia and Sunny who are central in the novel and then there are all the people whose lives intersect with theirs in some way. Their parents, friends, grandparents, lovers, servants and colleagues. It’s a book filled with so many interesting people that readers will undoubtedly connect with multiple individuals. Babita, Sunny’s mother, is particularly compelling for her intransigence.  

Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?  

In a book as vast as this one, the question is perhaps what isn’t – yet its treatment of human movement stands out. Whether it is Sunny or Sonia’s experience of being in America, Siegfried’s move from Germany to India or Dadaji’s travels, the questions of human movement and migration are thoughtfully handled.  

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits 

How would you summarise this book in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up? 

After his wife’s infidelity, Tom Layward promised himself that he would leave when his children went off for college, and so, after dropping his daughter off at university, that’s precisely what he does. 

Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before? 

What we haven’t encountered before is an author who evokes such Big Names without the act of emulating sentence structure. There’s a bit of Raymond Carver here, some Denis Johnson, a little Philip Roth, and definitely John Updike, but Markovits commits wholly to Tom Layward and the way he would see the world. 

What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love? 

Tom is not a literary king – he’s a dad and basketball enthusiast. We think readers will admire and enjoy high-concept analysis recounted by a ridiculously relatable narrator. 

The star of this novel is Tom’s voice: the lodestar and the ‘why now’. He is a democratic guide, he’s delightfully embarrassed, and he is as observant as he is negligent. But what’s most impressive is Markovits’ dedication to Tom as an averagely flawed human. Tom makes bad jokes, he’s a pushover, and it’s difficult to imagine being taken with him in person. 

But Markovits was possibly telling us something with Layward’s name, a historically English word, likely derived from Hayward. A trusted village official who guarded crops and kept livestock safe. This role in medieval England was appointed by a village court seeking reliability, fairness, and an ability to see the community at large. Some 500 years later, Tom Layward takes on the task of portraying a person’s accountability, if any, to all of the people he’s met along the way. 

Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why? 

On a second read, we were most taken with Michael. ‘I realize I haven’t said much about Michael yet,’ Tom says, on page 34. Tom’s son Michael is a 24-year-old graduate student whose mother wished he’d been a girl. ‘Michael had become one of those young people who decides that contact with their family is not a source of happiness, so you have to limit it to unavoidable occasions,’ Tom explains. We don’t have much contact with him until the end of the book, but it’s here that Michael’s place within the family deepens our understanding of Tom, of loneliness overall. 

Markovits beautifully details the experience of having a child who doesn’t enjoy being a child. We loved uncovering the depths of Michael, how he relates to his family, his partner, and himself. Perhaps this is what allows a novel to journey from the longlist to the shortlist: when characters we almost missed the first time become completely fundamental. 

Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world? 

This was something we enjoyed most: the fact that there are several stories, all relevant, seamlessly happening at the same time. The Rest of Our Lives is a basketball novel, a family saga, a book about sickness, and structurally, a road trip chronicle. And because of this road trip schema, this novel naturally became a story about how we say goodbye.  

Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why? 

As Tom travels west, he entertains an idea he’s had, to write a book about basketball. To drive around ‘in a beat up car and stop in various towns, big and small,’ and write about the people he plays with. After one of these games, Tom poses for a picture with the other players. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘sitting in the hospital chair, I think about that afternoon, and tell myself, maybe again’. We are not yet aware of why Tom is sitting in the hospital, but it matters very little after the heartbreaking pathos of a simply put but grand idea of ‘maybe again’. At this point, we trust Tom and Markovits to fill in the gaps when the time is right. We can enjoy Markovits’ ability to make time circular and relational on the page, much like it is in our daily lives.  

Flesh by David Szalay 

How would you summarise this book in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up? 

This is a novel about a man who is remarkably detached from his body and desires, and while he rises in class strata and leaves his home in Hungary for London, he is regretfully followed by his past. 

Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before? 

Szalay has a talent for only telling the good parts. This is the story of a man’s life, from his youth to deep into adulthood, and yet there are gaps left in the protagonist’s life that Szalay leaves uncovered. He generously allows the reader to fill them in, and yet there is not one wonky transition. 

What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love? 

Flesh is a disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it, but it is also an absolute page-turner. It’s nearly impossible to put down. The emotional detachment of the main character, István, is sustained by the tremendous movement of the plot. The pace of this novel speaks to one of the greater themes; the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.  

Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why? 

István may not be the character that readers would like to connect with, but his disconnection is so exacting that it feels reminiscent, like recalling a dream. He is ambitious and at times he is violent, but he is also an empty vessel; a product of the desires of those around him. 

‘He has this feeling, with women, that it’s hard to have an experience that feels entirely new, that doesn’t feel like something that has already happened, and will probably happen again in some very similar way, so that it never feels like all that much is at stake. There’s often this feeling of – Yes, I like you, but I like other people as well. It’s not even that I like them more. It’s just that I don’t like them less.’ 

Flesh is full of these types of annotation. The moments you’ve experienced but haven’t seen articulated. The kind that makes you pick up a novel in order to understand.  

Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world? 

Much has been said about the approach to masculinity in Flesh. István’s stepson describes István’s masculinity as ‘primitive’, one that has left him surprised and disappointed at his mother’s attraction. While we were impressed by Szalay’s take on masculinity – and how it often operates as paralysing indifference – we were mostly interested in the novel’s display of social mobility. Despite the fact that it occurs almost by accident, this is a novel about class ascension. Because of his past, István’s rise will always come at a cost. His origin will inevitably poke holes in his story until it takes over completely. 

Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why? 

Flesh has an opening chapter that refuses to hold the reader’s hand. Here we meet István as a teenager, a young man who relies on the word ‘okay’, whose already tenuous relationship to his body becomes coloured by sexual abuse and violence. The most successful opening chapters tell a reader how to read the rest of the book. Here, at the turning point of István’s life, Szalay instructs his readers to listen. In a lesser writer’s hands the pared-down prose would appear as dispirited stage directions, but through Szalay, Flesh achieves a haunting melancholy that hangs on till the last page.