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On 29 July 2025, Indian author Kiran Desai, winner of the 2006 Booker Prize, made a long-awaited return to the literary limelight with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a sweeping 667-page novel longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. A sprawling intergenerational epic that traces the lives of two young Indians navigating migration, memory, and modernity, it is Desai's first book in nearly twenty years. If Desai wins this year, she will become only the fifth author in the prize's history to win the Booker twice.
The 2025 Booker Prize longlist, announced on 29 July, features 13 books from authors representing nine different nationalities and span various continents, genres, and styles. This year's Booker jury — chaired by former Booker winner Roddy Doyle and including author Kiley Reid, actor-producer Sarah Jessica Parker, Nigerian novelist Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, and critic Chris Power — described the longlisted books as “quiet, intimate stories that push the boundaries of form and voice.” Unlike previous years, which were dominated by overtly political or high-drama fiction, the 2025 list favours introspective storytelling and emotional depth.
‘This novel (The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny) about a pair of young Indians in America becomes one about westernised Indians rediscovering their country, and in some ways a novel about the Indian novel’s place in the world. Vast and immersive, the book enfolds a magical realist fable within a social novel within a love story. We loved the way in which no detail, large or small, seems to escape Desai’s attention, every character (in a huge cast) feels fully realised, and the writing moves with consummate fluency between an array of modes: philosophical, comic, earnest, emotional, and uncanny.’
The Booker Prize Judges
Desai is joined by former nominees Tash Aw (The South), Andrew Miller (The Land in Winter), and David Szalay (Flesh), while debut authors Maria Reva (Endling) and Ledia Xhoga (Misinterpretation) make impressive entries. Reva's novel unfolds during Russia's revanchist invasion of Ukraine, while Xhoga's fiction straddles Albania and New York, grappling with memory and translation. The longlist, also known as the 'Booker Dozen' also includes Ben Markovits's The Rest of Our Lives, his 12th book and the first by a former professional basketball player to be longlisted; Susan Choi's Flashlight, which began as a New Yorker short story; and Jonathan Buckley's One Boat, the Fitzcarraldo Editions author's 13th novel.
The longlisted books traverse North Korea, Ukraine, Trinidad, Hungary, Greece, and the West Country, embracing formal experimentation and emotional intimacy. The shortest, Universality, is under 200 pages; while the longest, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, Desai's long-awaited return to fiction, is nearly 700 pages long.
The shortlist will be revealed at a public event at the Southbank Centre on September 23, 2025, with the winner announced on November 10 at a ceremony in London.
Follow The Booker Prizes for more information.
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