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Booker Prize 2025: the shortlisted novels reviewed

The FT critics’ verdicts on the six contenders for this year’s fiction prize, the winner of which will be announced on November 10

© Yuki Sugiura for Booker Prize Foundation

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — a Booker-shortlisted timeless tale of thwarted lovers
Kiran Desai’s long-awaited third novel is a cross-continental romance that explores displacement, family, ambition and identity
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller — quiet pleasures of the common cold
A haunting novel set in the freezing, snowbound English winter of 1963
Audition — Katie Kitamura’s sharply observed novel of human interaction
The feted novelist coolly dissects hidden narratives and the performative side of everyday conversation and relationships
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits — on the road to a mid-life meltdown
A compelling portrait of a professor driving across America in a bid to rediscover his freedom
Flashlight — Susan Choi’s rich generational saga
The novelist draws on Japanese-Korean history to create a restless, leisurely and capacious work that takes in a sweep of periods and places
Flesh by David Szalay — a portrait of modern masculinity
This compelling life story, which follows its Hungarian protagonist from adolescence to obsolescence, goes to places few novelists dare