Exploring the 2025 Booker Prize Shortlist

The 2025 Booker Prize shortlist showcases a diverse collection of novels spanning various genres such as historical fiction, campus novels, and dystopian fiction. Notable past Booker Prize winners, Marlon James and Douglas Stuart, make a return to the shortlist with their latest works The Disappearers and John of John, respectively. Elizabeth Strout also reappears as a finalist for her work The Things We Never Say.

Mary Beard, chair of the 2025 judging panel, praised the shortlisted novels. She expressed the range of their storytelling, highlighting elements from humor to discomfort, strange to domestic, shocking to understated. “This is writing at its best,” she remarked.

The recognition for the shortlisted authors includes receiving a special bound copy of their book and a prize of £2,500 (about $3,300). The winner, set to be announced on November 9, will receive a trophy and £50,000 (about $66,600).

Here are this year’s shortlisted authors and their works:

• The End of Everything by M. John Harrison: Known for science fiction, Harrison presents his 13th novel in a post-apocalyptic setting. The protagonist sells treasures from the English Channel and discovers something unusual.
• The Disappearers by Marlon James: James, a Booker Prize winner from 2015 with A Brief History of Seven Killings, returns with a story about a violent mob attack on a group of gay men during a play in 1988 Kingston, Jamaica.
• Black Bag by Luke Kennard: Poet Kennard writes a narrative about a character hidden in a black bag in a classroom, inspired by a 1967 experiment testing the “mere-exposure effect.”
• May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry: Perry’s debut novel explores how history is remembered through the eyes of a curator examining the life of a reluctant king.
• The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: Strout, previously shortlisted and longlisted for her work, delivers another engaging novel, which NPR critic Maureen Corrigan describes as enchantingly successful.
• John of John by Douglas Stuart: Stuart presents a story about a father and son sharing a secret, with themes of religion, obligation, and place.