The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist consisting of the novels of six authors released September 23, 2025, includes New Yorker, Kiran Desai. The winner of the prestigious 50,000 pounds prize for fiction will be announced November 10, 2025, at a ceremony in London.
Like Desai, who was born in New Delhi and educated in India, UK, and US, and now lives in New York, her book “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ also spans continents, garnering high praise from the judges.
“The writing moves with consummate fluency between an array of modes: philosophical, comic, earnest, emotional, and uncanny.”
The novel is about Indians in America. But as the judges say, it, “becomes one about westernised Indians rediscovering their country, and in some ways a novel about the Indian novel’s place in the world.”
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They go on to say, “Vast and immersive, the book enfolds a magical realist fable within a social novel within a love story.” For Desai, it seems no detail is too large or too small to leave out. And in the huge cast of characters, “every character feels fully realised.”
The six ‘brilliantly written’ and ‘brilliantly human’ novels that make up this year’s Booker Prize shortlist include:
- Flashlight by Susan Choi
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
- Audition by Katie Kitamura
- The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
- The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
- Flesh by David Szalay
Judges Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Roddy Doyle, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Power and Kiley Reid selected this year’s Booker Prize shortlist from 153 works of long-form fiction.
On being asked – Why pick up The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny? – the Judges said, “Because of the ‘rich intricacies and the sheer bounty each page offers’.
Synopsis of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny:
When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.
Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.