Steve_Bamlett_blog

The 2025 Booker Shortlist – My experience & predictions for those I read

The Longlist blog is still available – and still messy. It is here at this link, if you want to access link to blogs on books not shortlisted. Tash Aw was definitively cheated of a shortlist place with his best book ever (The South – linked here to my blog).

2025 Booker Longlist – The shortlisting, and predictions by me. Prediction not intended as such for unread Miller.

Here’s the 2025 Shortlist in my order. I am often wrong. LOL! The actual winner of the Booker Prize 2025 will be announced at a ceremony in London on Monday, 10 November. The winning author will receive £50,000.

Author	Title / Publisher	Blog Yes / No Predicted Order	Yes/No Answer has link to blog where appropriate. Explanation otherwise
Kiran Desai	The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Hamish Hamilton	Yes blog 1st	https://livesteven.com/2025/10/17/a-speculative-blog-on-kiran-desais-the-loneliness-of-sunny-and-sonia-my-booker-winner/
Katie Kitamura	Audition Fern Press	Yes blog 2nd	https://livesteven.com/2025/08/05/this-is-a-blog-on-katie-kitamura-2025-audition/
David Szalay	Flesh Jonathan Cape	Yes blog 3rd	https://livesteven.com/2025/08/02/what-dyou-mean-what-do-you-mean-what-do-i-mean-do-we-ever-know-what-a-person-means-is-that-the-issue-in-david-szalays-2025-booker-longlisted-novel-flesh/
Ben Markovits	The Rest of Our Lives Faber	Yes blog 4th	https://livesteven.com/2025/08/19/this-is-a-blog-on-ben-markovits-2025-the-rest-our-lives-london-faber/
Susan Choi	Flashlight Jonathan Cape	Yes (half-blog) 5th	https://livesteven.com/2025/08/27/i-blog-to-keep-my-brain-and-heart-ticking-and-to-read-better-sometimes-the-latter-aim-fails-this-blog-takes-as-an-exampole-my-planned-blog-on-susan-choi-2025-flashlight/
Andrew Miller	The Land in Winter Sceptre	No blog Notional 6th	I haven’t read this offering nor do I intend to. Pity! If it wins but read out for this year.

A lot of people have said this is a fine shortlist but my favourite was that of last year. I think guessing the winner or order (never announced anyway) just a game but I deliberately plumped for Kiran Desai’ The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny because of her defence of the long novel within her novel, but also because of the range of register in this novel which destabilises readers looking for its ‘central’ mode. It contains very fine writing through its near 700 pages. It does not feel half as long as Choi’s Flashlight, however, which disappointed me quite a lot. Yet lots of voices are raised predicting it a winner, those that don’t say Miller. The shorter novels fit the fashion of the short postmodern novel completely but only Kitty Kitamura, in Audition, really does something with the tenets of postmodernism fully and consistently, whilst producing a very fine novel on the ideology of family and relationships. Szalay’s Flesh is a fine book on masculinity and Markovits rewrites the lyrical trend to visions of mortality from the seventeenth century in a novel that could also be a ‘state of the nation’ statement for the USA.

Love Steven xxxxxxxx