The Booker Prize 2025 Longlist, which was released on the 29th of July, was received with a mixture of surprise and disappointment by readers. Many were disheartened by the absence of their favourite titles, as well as the complete lack of Irish writing on the list. Furthermore, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is only set to be released by the end of September, and as such, only a select few readers will have access to this nomination.
Despite this, the Longlist offers many exciting titles, many of which strive to interpret the contemporary moment in idiosyncratic, yet insightful ways. This is, in fact, the primary goal of the Booker. Founded in 1969, it recognises fiction titles published in the UK and Ireland with the aim to encourage readers to read books that confront our immediate realities. In the past years, it has boasted winners such as Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Bernardine Evaristo. Furthermore, six Irish authors have won the Booker Prize since its foundation in 1969.
The judging panel consists of five judges: Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Kiley Reid, Sarah Jessica Parker and Chris Power, and is led by the Irish author Roddy Doyle. Publishers from all over Ireland and the UK submit their very best works, all of which are read by the judges. They all then form the Longlist, which consists of thirteen titles, otherwise known as the ‘Booker Dozen’.
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
Misinterpretation follows an Albanian translator in New York as she meets a Kosovan torture survivor and begins to translate for him in his therapy sessions. Over time, she becomes more and more involved in the life of her client until both her personal relationships and her own mental health begin to deteriorate. This is Xhoga’s debut novel and has previously won the Hornblower award, among other literary prizes.
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
Seascraper is a work of historical fiction that narrates the story of a young boy, the breadwinner of the family, who follows in his grandfather’s trade by scraping the seashore for shrimp. He secretly dreams of becoming a musician and endures his mundane life with the strength that his creativity grants him. However, one day a stranger from Hollywood arrives and offers to bring his dreams to fruition, a promise which threatens to disrupt his entire life.
Flesh by David Szalay
The protagonist of Flesh, a lonely Hungarian teenager, lives a seemingly ordinary life before it begins to spiral after he has an affair with his much older neighbour. The novel captures the remnants of this event in snapshots as they reverberate through his entire life. Written in a sparse and distinctive style, this novel explores notions of masculinity and the failure of passive communication. Szalay’s 2016 novel All That Man Is was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Endling by Maria Reva
Endling is one of the first more unconventional novels on this list, or a ‘Post-Novel’ as Reva declares it in the text. It details the lives of three women as they navigate Ukraine’s marriage industry and come to terms with the incoming Russian invasion. These larger themes are interlaced with tales of snail extinction, a feminist plot to abduct Westerners and wedding dresses. It is a true reflection of how fiction is disrupted by the horrors of reality.
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
Set in the West Country in the 1960s, The Land in Winter narrates a few weeks in the lives of two couples during a particularly cold winter, one of the coldest that the UK has ever experienced. This novel is a dense character study that explores the legacy of war, domestic life, as well as how human beings persist through periods of intense isolation. This novel was awarded the Walter Scott prize for Historical Fiction earlier this year.
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
The Rest of Our Lives is a classic road-trip novel which delves into themes of marriage, identity and mortality. When his wife cheats on him, the protagonist swears to leave her once his youngest daughter leaves for university. When he drops her off, he simply continues driving instead of returning home, and we watch as various figures from his past begin to emerge and compel him to reflect on various aspects of his life.
Audition by Katia Kitamura
Audition follows a middle-aged actress preparing for a play. She meets a young man at a restaurant and no one can really understand what their relationship is. This relationship is presented by two diverging narratives, each exploring the delicate balance between perception and reality. Audition is a disturbingly experimental novel that resists interpretation and forces us to question whether we can fully understand each other. Kitamura’s 2021 novel, Intimacies, was listed as one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2021, as well as being in the New York Times’ Best Books of 2021 list.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a novel of wide scope detailing the lives of two young people, hailing from India, who decide to move to the United States in order to build a better life for themselves. Sonia, an aspiring novelist, and Sunny, a journalist, cross paths, and together they navigate a world in which they feel utterly powerless and alone. This novel is set to be released in September of this year.
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Flashlight begins with a 10-year-old girl and her father, a Korean immigrant to Japan, walking on the beach, when suddenly she loses consciousness and later wakes to find her father missing. Threaded with events from 20th-century Japanese-Korean history, this epic family saga balances precariously between wider global politics of ‘otherness’ and the domestic identity that a family forms for itself. Choi’s stellar character-work comes to fruition in Flashlight, yet has previously been recognised in her second novel American Woman when it was listed as a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer prize.
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
Following the death of her father, the protagonist of One Boat escapes to the town in Greece she had visited to grieve the death of her mother a few years prior. She revisits characters from her previous visit and reflects on existence and our ability to form narratives to structure our own lives. A philosophical yet accessible novel, One Boat is a study of grief and of human connection in the midst of one of the most ruinous and distressing events that a person can experience: the loss of a parent.
Universality by Natasha Brown
One of the few thriller-like novels on this list, Universality tackles questions of identity politics, the way in which we weaponise storytelling and the nature of truth itself. The novel opens with an article written in 2021 during lockdown that details an incident in which someone is hit with a gold bar. The novel then delves into three other perspectives on this event, and we see how each angle is tinted by their conflicting politics. Universality was a finalist for the 2025 Orwell Prize.
The South by Tash Aw
The South, set in a summer in the 1990s, tells the story of the love between two boys coming of age in southern Malaysia. Their love foregrounds the world that Aw builds, yet is but a jigsaw piece in the larger themes at play. The Asian Financial Crisis and climate destruction are key to this tale as the protagonist learns to cope with his recently deceased grandfather’s farmland as it suffers through long periods of drought. These devastating forces seep into the domestic sphere and force characters to reflect on past choices. This multi-perspectival family saga explores class dynamics, queerness and heritage and is set to be the first in a quartet of novels.
Love Forms by Claire Adams
Love Forms is a reflective novel which describes the moment in which a woman, now in her fifties, is approached by a ghost from her past. Born in Trinidad, the protagonist gives birth to a child at the age of sixteen and is forced to leave it in a Venezuelan nunnery. This is a novel about a woman coming face to face with her own history, with her country’s history and all the interweaving webs between them as she strives to reunite with her daughter whilst navigating motherhood.
…. And that is this year’s Booker dozen! On the 23rd of September, this list will be halved to form the Booker Shortlist. The winner will then be announced on the 25th of November at Old Billingsgate in London, and will be awarded 50,000 pounds, as well as being met with international acclaim. If you, like many others, lack the time to read all of these thirteen titles, the Booker Prize website has a solution for you. It contains extracts from all the novels, as well as a quiz that you can take, which asks questions about your reading tastes before offering a Booker nominee that would be best suited to you.
Happy reading!
