Booker Prize Longlist 2025: 13 Fiction Picks Worth Reading This Year

1. Love Forms

Love Forms by Claire Adam pulls at the heartstrings with its aching portrait of motherhood. At sixteen, Dawn Bishop gives birth to a daughter in Venezuela and gives her up for adoption. Forty years later, now a divorced mother of two grown sons, she finds herself consumed by the absence of the child she once let go.

What begins as a quiet ache deepens into an all-consuming search. Could this lost daughter be the one to finally give form to all the love and care Dawn still carries?

2. The South

The South by Tash Aw is a layered queer coming-of-age story set on a once-thriving southern farm now marked by drought and decline. The novel follows the story of Jay, who returns with his family to the land they’ve inherited from his recently deceased grandfather. As he’s sent out to work the fields, Jay is drawn to Chuan, the farm manager’s son, in a bond that reshapes his sense of self. The novel expands on the themes of family fracture, buried regret, and the lingering shadows of the Asian financial crisis.

3. Universality

In Universality, Natasha Brown follows up her acclaimed debut Assembly with a razor-sharp mystery that’s as much about the power of words as it is about murder. When a man is found brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar on a Yorkshire farm, an ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth.

Told through shifting perspectives, Universality peels back the layers of a society entangled in systems of economic, political, and media control. It’s a bold interrogation of how narratives can be twisted and manipulated.

4. One Boat

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley follows the story of Teresa, who returns to the Greek town to grieve after losing her father, nearly nine years after first grieving her mother there. Blending past and present, journal entries, dreams, and a growing reconnection with the landscape, the novel forms a rich mosaic of memory and self-reflection. It is an excellent investigation into the questions of free will, memory’s role in grief, and personal responsibility.

5. Flashlight

Flashlight by Susan Choi opens with a tragedy. 10-year-old Louisa and her father Serk go for a walk along a breakwater in coastal Japan—only for Louisa to wake up washed up on the beach, her father vanished, presumed drowned. As Louisa and her mother Anne return to the U.S., the mystery surrounding Serk deepens, eventually tracing its way through post-war Japan, suburban America, and the shadowed grip of North Korea.

Moving across borders and generations, Flashlight is a sweeping, emotionally precise novel about migration, memory, and the hidden currents of 20th-century history.

6. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is a sweeping, cross-continental love story shaped by family history, cultural pressure, and the search for self. When Sonia and Sunny cross paths on an overnight train in India, they’re drawn to each other—despite a shared history of awkward matchmaking by their grandparents. As their lives drift and collide across countries and years, their story becomes a layered reflection on intimacy, alienation, and the complex legacies we inherit.

7. Audition

In Audition, Katie Kitamura crafts a taut, cerebral thriller that asks: do we ever truly know those we love?

A celebrated actress meets a younger man for lunch in Manhattan. Their conversation is charged and far from casual. As the story deepens, so do two competing narratives exploring the roles we play every day. A radical meditation on intimacy and identity, staged with unsettling restraint.

8. The Rest of Our Lives

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits is an emotionally-packed novel about ageing, marriage, and the promises we make to ourselves. When Tom Layward drops his youngest daughter at college, he remembers a vow made years ago after his wife’s affair—to leave once the kids were grown. Instead of returning home, he keeps driving, unsure of his destination but haunted by regrets, secrets, and old connections.

As he visits people from his past, the novel explores a deeply human story about the weight of time, the shape of long relationships, and the moments that redefine the rest of our lives.

9. The Land in Winter

Set in England’s West Country during the brutal Big Freeze of December 1962, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller weaves together the stories of two neighbouring young couples facing both elemental and emotional storms. As one of the coldest winters in living memory takes hold, fragile marriages begin to unravel. Miller’s prose is crystalline—meticulous, elegant, and deeply empathetic—offering a slow-burning portrait of love, regret, and survival in a frozen world.

10. Endling

Maria Reva’s Endling is a wildly original debut that blends war, satire, and metafiction into one unforgettable novel. Set in modern-day Ukraine, it follows a rogue biologist, a disappearing mother, and a last-of-its-kind snail through a surreal, war-torn landscape. At once a critique of the mail-order bride industry and a meditation on extinction, Endling is witty, biting, brilliant, and unlike anything you’ve read before.

11. Flesh

Flesh by David Szalay is a spare yet emotionally piercing novel that traces the life of István. He is a lonely teenager in Hungary whose forbidden relationship with a much older woman sets off a chain of irreversible choices. As he moves from isolation to affluence—rising through the army and eventually into London’s elite—the novel explores the costs of ambition, desire, and disconnection.

12. Seascraper

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood is a mesmerising portrait of a young man bound by class and family ghosts, longing for artistic freedom. In the foggy coastal town of Longferry, Thomas lives a quiet life as a shanker, secretly dreaming of becoming a folk musician. His days are routine—until a mysterious American arrives, stirring hopes of escape and fulfilment. Tender and evocative, Seascraper is a moving coming-of-age tale about ambition and the ache of dreams deferred.

13. Misinterpretation

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga is all about an Albanian interpreter's unhealthy obsession with the trauma of her clients—especially Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor. Sessions with him unearth her own buried memories, while an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet spirals into risk and regret.

As her marriage and mental health falter, a sudden trip to Albania forces her to confront the life she’s built—and what it’s cost. Tense and haunting, Misinterpretation is an exploration of the fragile boundary between help and harm.

These Booker Prize 2025 books are a testament to literature’s boundless potential. More than ever, these works of fiction reflect a truly global perspective—one that spans continents, cultures, and emotional terrains. With £50,000 awarded to the winner and £2,500 to each shortlisted author, the prize continues to champion fiction that dares to imagine more.

As we look ahead to the first-ever offline shortlist announcement, it’s a great time to dive into the Booker Prize nominees 2025 and discover what makes each one worth your shelf space.