Everything you need to know about the Booker Prize 2025

Apparently Ian Fleming had had something to do with it?

That’s right. Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and a regular golfing companion of Booker chairman Jock Campbell, died in 1964. Before Fleming’s death, Campbell had launched an “authors’ division” within Booker, paying £100,000 for a 51 per cent share of the profits from Fleming’s worldwide royalties. The Booker Authors’ Division soon expanded its reach, acquiring the literary estates of Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Harold Pinter, and others, turning the company’s colonial fortunes toward the commerce of the imagination.

Who won the first Booker Prize?

The inaugural Booker Prize was awarded to PH Newby for Something to Answer For.

What is the eligibility criteria?

Any book published in English and in the UK

And who judges the books?

The Booker Prize Foundation has an in-house team who select a multicultural group of creative artistes, experts and critics from different fields every year to judge that year’s entries. These people come up with a long longlist of 13 recommendations. This is pared down to six in the shortlist before a consensus is arrived at.

Who was the first woman winner?

Bernice Rubens, for The Elected Member, in 1970, the second year of the Prize.

Has any Indian won the Booker Prize?

Yes. Several Indian writers as well as writers of Indian-origin have won the Prize. These include VS Naipaul in 1971 for In A Free State, Salman Rushdie for Midnight’s Children in 1981, Arundhati Roy for The God of Small Things (1997), Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger (2008). Midnight’s Children won the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and again as The Best of the Booker in 2008.

Wait, isn’t there an International Booker Prize as well? How is it different?

Yes, there is. It was called the Man Booker International Prize when it was launched in 2005. It was initially awarded twice a year and early winners included Alice Munro, Philip Roth and this year’s Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai. In 2015, the rules were changed to allow works by writers of any nationality so long it had been translated into English and published in the UK. The prize also became an annual affair. The name changed to International Man Booker in 2019 once the chief sponsor, The Man Group, pulled out.

Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell won the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand.

And have Indians won that as well?

In 2022, Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell won the International Booker Prize for Tomb of Sand, the translation of Shree’s Hindi novel Ret Samadhi. This year, Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi won it for the translated anthology of Mushtaq’s short stories from Kannada into English, Heart Lamp.

Who won the Prize last year?

English writer Samantha Harvey for her extraordinary space odyssey, Orbital.

What does the shortlist look like this year?

The six books this year are Hungarian-British writer David Szalay’s Flesh, The Land in Winter by British writer Andrew Miller, American novelist Susan Choi’s Flashlight, American writer Katie Kitamura’s Audition, Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, and The Rest of Our Lives by British-American writer Ben Markovits.

One last thing. Any idea who the favourites are this year?

Well, Desai leads the bookies’ pack, with Markovits and Miller close behind.

When does the suspense lift then?

Tuesday, November 11, 3am (IST).