Top 6 Themes in the 2025 Booker Prize Finalists

From an initial pool of 150 submissions, the 2025 Booker Prize judges have narrowed the competition to six outstanding novels. Ahead of the winner’s announcement on November 10, literary experts share their reflections on the finalists, exploring their themes, depth, and artistry.

The Rest of Our Lives – Ben Markovits

After 12 years of waiting to fulfill a promise to leave his unfaithful wife once their youngest child enters college, Tom finally embarks on a cross-country road trip through a vividly drawn yet familiar America.

Narrated by Tom himself, the novel shifts between confession and restraint, inviting readers to consider their own reflections within the story. Each character — the wife seeking emotional intensity, the distant son, the unsettled daughter, and Tom himself — represents shades of human longing and regret.

Despite life’s missed opportunities, Tom shows little remorse, instead finding meaning in ordinary moments, stability, and family. The quiet emotional tension of this story, rich in introspection, makes it both tender and cinematic — a likely candidate for film adaptation.

— Reviewed by Jenni Ramone, Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Global Literatures, Nottingham Trent University

The Land in Winter – Andrew Miller

Set during the bitter winter of 1963’s “Big Freeze,” The Land in Winter explores the intertwined lives of two couples — Eric and Irene, Bill and Rita — living in England’s southwest countryside.

Told over just a few months, the novel captures the claustrophobia of a small cast facing emotional and environmental extremes. Both women, pregnant and uncertain, form a fragile bond while navigating lives that often feel out of their control.

Pregnancy here is not celebrated but portrayed as a binding responsibility. Symbolism runs deep — a pregnant cow foreshadows tragedy as Miller’s narrative unfolds through motifs of birth, confinement, and loss. The result is a haunting domestic drama where atmosphere outweighs comfort.

— Reviewed by Stevie Marsden, Lecturer in Publishing Studies, Edinburgh Napier University

Flashlight – Susan Choi

Susan Choi’s Flashlight begins with a chilling mystery: ten-year-old Louisa is found barely alive after walking along a seaside breakwater with her father, Serk, who has vanished and is presumed drowned.

Instead of offering immediate answers, Choi unfolds the lives of three interconnected figures — Louisa, Serk, and Anne — across continents and decades. The story moves from Japan to the United States, illuminating identity, displacement, and the unhealed wounds of history.

Serk, a Korean born in Japan, struggles with belonging, while Anne, Louisa’s American mother, embodies cultural fragmentation and maternal loss. Together, their stories form a web of absence and endurance.

A deeply layered exploration of memory and migration, Flashlight is both ambitious and profoundly moving — a novel that demands reflection.

— Reviewed by Sojin Lim, Reader in Asia Pacific Studies, University of Central Lancashire

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Flesh – David Szalay

David Szalay, previously Booker-shortlisted for All That Man Is (2016), returns with Flesh, another powerful meditation on masculinity and modern European existence.

The novel follows István, a Hungarian man, from adolescence through middle age. His life unfolds through spare, minimalist prose — marked by violence, desire, and survival.

Despite covering sex, crime, and war, Szalay resists indulgence; the narrative remains stripped down, mirroring the emotional emptiness of its protagonist. Readers experience István from the outside, glimpsing his strength and vulnerability but rarely his inner voice.

Through this stark restraint, Szalay delivers a profound critique of identity and dehumanization — what it means to be seen only as flesh, not as a whole person.

— Reviewed by Tory Young, Associate Professor of Literature, Anglia Ruskin University

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny – Kiran Desai

Nearly two decades after winning the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai returns with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny — a sweeping, multi-generational love story that spans continents and decades.

Set between the 1990s and early 2000s, the novel follows Sonia Shah, an aspiring novelist in Vermont, and Sunny Bhati, a struggling journalist in New York. Their fates are entangled by their well-meaning but manipulative grandparents back in India.

Desai’s narrative traverses India, the US, Italy, and Mexico, weaving themes of class, migration, and postcolonial identity. The decaying family estates in North India symbolize fading privilege and colonial residue, while the protagonists search for meaning in love, art, and belonging.

With striking insight and lyrical depth, Desai captures loneliness, ambition, and the fragile beauty of human connection.

— Reviewed by Ruvani Ranasinha, Professor of Global Literature, King’s College London

Audition – Katie Kitamura

Katie Kitamura’s Audition unfolds in two seemingly contradictory halves, exploring parallel realities of motherhood, loss, and identity.

In the first half, an actress in her late forties meets a young man who suspects he is the child she gave up for adoption — but she reveals she had an abortion instead. In the second, the same man is portrayed as her son who left home after a family dispute and now wishes to reconcile.

These conflicting versions coexist, offering readers a disquieting meditation on memory and alternate possibilities. Through spare, deliberate prose, Kitamura examines performance, intimacy, and the uncertainty that defines human relationships.

Both haunting and elegant, Audition is a masterclass in narrative duality and emotional restraint.

— Reviewed by Adam Roberts, Professor of 19th-Century Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London

Conclusion

This year’s Booker shortlist offers a striking panorama of human experience. Its domestic drama and quiet introspection to expansive stories of love, loss, and identity. Whether exploring the boundaries of realism or experimenting with narrative form. These six novels reaffirm literature’s enduring ability to reflect and reimagine life’s complexities.

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