The Times described the shortlist for the Booker Prize 2025 as “revenge on the middle-aged writer”. The phrase may sound derogatory but it’s not meant to be. In the same review, the 2025 Booker Prize shortlist is described as “novels of maturity” with “maturity being rewarded over novelty”.
The Booker Prize’s website confirms this, highlighting the former winner (Kiran Desai), two previous shortlisted authors, (Andrew Miller, and David Szalay), on the list. It also notes that each of the six authors has a long literary career.
Book prizes should be rewarded for novelty. The Booker, however, is a book award, and not an author’s prize such as the Nobel. If novelty isn’t evident from the author, then it will be apparent in their book.
It is not surprising that they are older. Bernardine Evaristo established the Pioneer Prize to recognize and honor pioneering British female writers in any genre. Evaristo says that this prize aims to address the issue that older women writers are often overlooked. Maureen Duffy, 91 years old, was the first winner.
Penguin
These Booker Prizes and Booker Nominations may be a response to the society’s focus on youth. This is reflected by initiatives like Granta’s Best Young Novelists and Penguin’s Authors Under 35 To Watch, and in previous years, The New Yorker 20 Under 40 List.
The Booker award winner will reveal whether it reflects or rejects the trend that older female writers are being overlooked. According to the odds and my students, Susan Choi and Desai are the likely winners of this year’s Booker Prize. Ben Markovits, The Rest of Our Lives, is behind.
Flashlight is a book that captures several generations in a family, starting with migrant workers from Japan during the 1940s, and moving to suburban America, North Korea, etc. My students found it fascinating because of the historical context. The students appreciated the lesser-documented story of migration and thought the mystery fiction element added to the appeal.
My students thought that Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives would be a good contender for the Booker Prize. They cited the affair with the other woman, the trip to America and the inner-monologue narration of eloquent, thoughtful and witty university professor protagonists as reasons why the book might become popular.
The plot is also similar to Flashlight, as the characters feel out of place. Tom’s world slowly unravels in The Rest of Our Lives when his marriage is strained by the decision of Tom and his wife to remain together after their daughter had an affair. The narrator chooses a scenic road trip over a major upheaval.
Ayobami Adebayo, Chris Power Roddy Doyle Sarah Jessica Parker, Kier Reid and Kiddy Reid are the 2025 Booker Judges.
Booker Prize Foundation / Neo Gilder
Miller’s The Land in Winter also features an extramarital affair. The harsh winters of England’s West Country in 1962 and 1963 force two couples, who are forced to remain indoors in order to escape the cold, to face their uneasy relationship dynamics.
Alison Riley is a person that could bring down a house to hear what noise it makes.
Katie Kitamura’s Audition is the book that best expresses how all six novels are connected by the uncertainty about individual identities, which comes from unconventional family relationships.
The novel is divided into two sections that explore the relationship of the protagonist with a young adult man who could be or not be his son. As the Booker judges noted, the novel implies that we all play different roles, just like the protagonist who initially rejects that a young man could be her son and then changes positions to live with him, pretending that he is.
Szalay’s Flesh is perhaps the book that has most impressed me. This book also conveys the unfolding of life in uncertainty and risks, but its plot involves a boy of 15 years old who is involved with a woman his age. The story of Flesh, written as a long dialogue, is sharp and sparse.
Penguin
After writing about Desai’s two previous novels in post-colonialist studies, I am excited to read The Loneliness of Sunny & Sonia. It was released on the same day as the Booker Shortlist Announcement – an auspicious signal perhaps.
It is her only third book in a career spanning decades. She describes it as a romantic novel. Recently, publishers have pointed out a rise in romance fiction including its subgenres such as romantasy. The book could be a good fit for this genre, thanks to the association of Sarah Jessica Parker with romance and new screen versions of romance novels like Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Height and Pride and Prejudice on Netflix in 2026.
The Loneliness Of Sunny And Sonia opens with a protagonist aged 55 whose parents are in control of every aspect of her life. However, the film is primarily concerned with an epic love story between its two titular characters.
Desai continues to change literary directions between novels in this novel. She had herself criticized Hullaballoo In The Guava Orchard for being “exoticist”. Now, in The Loneliness of Sunny And Sonia she takes on that charge when the protagonist Sonia gets accused of “orientalist rubbish”. Desai said in an interview with the Guardian that her character is expressing Desai’s own concerns about writing about India to a Western audience.
The Inheritance Of Loss is Desai’s second novel. It was written in the aftermath violence that resulted from a claim to a separate Indian state after Partition. Desai won the Booker Prize at age 35 in 2006. She was the youngest woman ever to receive the prize. In 2013, the Booker Prize went to Eleanor Catton, who is even younger. The Booker Prize winner tends to have an older age.
All the novels on this year’s list are a testament to how uncertainty and change can overwhelm us, often causing disruptions which have been hidden for years. The stories are not safe or comfortable, even though they (mostly), revolve around middle-aged characters.
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