Booker Prize 2025 shortlist announced — and Kiran Desai is back

For Indian readers, the headline is Desai’s return. The Indian-born author, who won the Booker in 2006, has long been seen as one of the most distinctive voices of her generation. In The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, she crafts what the judges described as “a truly unforgettable epic,” intertwining the love story of its titular characters with questions of class, race, nationhood and migration.

“One of the reasons this book stands out is that it has so much going on,” the panel said. “Many characters, subplots and places — yet all of it is woven together into one magnificent story.”

The shortlist

The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist (Credit: Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation)

📌 Susan Choi’s Flashlight stretches across continents and generations, blending family drama with geopolitical intrigue. The judges praised its “life-spanning trajectories” and the intimate portraits of its characters.

📌 Katie Kitamura’s Audition unsettles with its taut structure and blurred lines between reality and performance. “Kitamura doesn’t hand-hold or explain,” the panel said, calling it “a marker of trust” in the reader.

📌 Ben Markovits’s The Rest of Our Lives follows a father reeling from infidelity and family estrangement. Its power lies, the judges said, in “the way seemingly peripheral characters become completely fundamental.”

📌 Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter revisits the brutal winter of 1962–63 in rural England. The novel’s power, according to the panel, rests in its “joyful, nerve-shredding” readability and vividly drawn characters.

📌 David Szalay’s Flesh dissects masculinity, alienation and social mobility through the life of a Hungarian émigré in London. The judges called it “a disquisition on the art of being alive — and an absolute page-turner.”

The shortlist reflects both continuity and renewal in the Booker landscape. Miller is a previous winner, while Choi and Kitamura are acclaimed American authors whose reputations have steadily grown. Markovits and Szalay, both British, represent different strands of the contemporary novel, one expansive and voice-driven, the other pared back and elliptical.

But it is Desai’s presence that will draw particular attention. Her return, after years of relative quiet, places her at the center of the global literary stage once again. “It’s a book filled with so many interesting people that readers will undoubtedly connect with multiple individuals,” the judges said.

These books from the longlist did not make it to the final list: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood, Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga, Love Forms by Claire Adam, The South by Tash Aw, Universality by Natasha Brown, One Boat by Jonathan Buckley and Endling by Maria Reva.

The winner of the Booker Prize, which carries a £50,000 purse and near-guaranteed international recognition, will be announced on November 14, at Old Billingsgate in London.

Here’s the full shortlist

📌 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

📌Flesh by David Szalay

📌 Flashlight by Susan Choi

📌 The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

📌 Audition by Katie Kitamura

📌 The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits