The Booker 2025 longlist announced: A global showcase of the power of fiction

The 2025 Booker Prize longlist was revealed on Tuesday, July 29, showcasing a global ensemble of literary brilliance, with novels that spanned continents, genres, and narrative styles. The 'Booker Dozen'—13 titles selected from 153 submissions—was chosen by a panel chaired by Irish novelist and 1993 Booker Prize winner, Roddy Doyle, marking the first time a former winner has led the judging.

Joining Doyle on the panel are Nigerian author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, American actor and publisher Sarah Jessica Parker, literary critic Chris Power, and novelist Kiley Reid.

This year's longlist features a remarkable mix of seasoned voices and bold debuts. It includes previous Booker winner, Kiran Desai, returning 19 years after her 2006 win for The Inheritance of Loss, and two debut novelists making their first mark on the prize's prestigious stage.
The longlisted titles are:

• Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• Flesh by David Szalay
• Endling by Maria Reva
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
• Audition by Katie Kitamura
• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• One Boat by Jonathan Buckley
• Universality by Natasha Brown
• The South by Tash Aw
• Love Forms by Claire Adam

The longlist paints a wide canvas: from postcolonial Korean life in Japan and a Hungarian housing estate to a Malaysian shrimp farm and the coldest winter in the UK. Themes of migration, memory, survival, and identity are explored through innovative narrative structures and intimate storytelling.

"This is a wonderful heap," said Doyle, echoing the emotional intensity of the judging process. "Some of the books examine the past and others poke at our shaky present…"

Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, called the longlist "the most internationally diverse in a decade," highlighting voices from Albania, Malaysia, Trinidad, Korea, Hungary, India, and more, alongside five British authors.
For the first time, the shortlist of six books will be revealed at a public event at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in London on September 23. The shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their novel. The winner, to be announced on November 10 at Old Billingsgate, will take home £50,000.

As literary enthusiasts gear up for the next round of speculation, the 2025 Booker Prize longlist stands as a testament to fiction's enduring ability to surprise, challenge, and move its readers across borders and beyond.

Mahmuda Emdad is a women and gender studies major with an endless interest in feminist writings, historical fiction, and pretty much everything else, all while questioning the world in the process. Reach out at [email protected].