The Booker Prize 2025: Subtle power and global resonance

This year's Booker Prize longlist pulses with quiet intensity. From the return of Kiran Desai after a 19-year silence to Maria Reva's striking debut, the list trades fireworks for finesse. That's right up my street.

These are novels of displacement, longing and radical introspection, stories that ask readers to listen closely.

What stands out is the international makeup: voices from Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean. The longlist leans into silences, slow revelations, inner transformation. It’s a curiously intimate offering from a prize often associated with high-concept drama. The judges appear to favour nuance over spectacle, resilience over resolution.

Highlights from the longlist include:

• Kiran Desai – The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny: A contemplative exploration of ageing and diaspora, told with aching sensitivity.

• Natasha Brown – Safe Harbour: A formally inventive meditation on race, womanhood and British identity.

• Maria Reva – Grey Bees: Surreal yet grounded, it captures post-Soviet disorientation with warmth and satire.

• David Szalay – Turbulence: Stories linked by flight paths and fleeting connections, rendered in exacting prose.

• Ledia Xhoga – The Empty House: A haunting debut from Albania, confronting memory and migration.

This is a longlist for readers who trust a book to whisper, not shout. It signals a renewed attention to voice, emotional range and literary quietude in a world of noise.