PVLF 2025

Indie Publishers Shine in 2025 Booker Prize Shortlist

The 2025 International Booker Prize shortlist features 6 titles, all from indie publishers, highlighting diverse global voices and exceptional literary translations.
on Apr 14, 2025

The shortlist for this year's £50,000 International Booker Prize is now out. The judges for 2025 are Max Porter (chair), Caleb Femi, Sana Goyal, Anton Hur and Beth Orton.

Selected from a longlist of 16 out of an overall pool of submissions of 154 books, the shortlist for the prize this year is:

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara J Haveland, published by Faber)

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (trans. Helen Stevenson, published by Small Axes)

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami (trans. Asa Yoneda, published by Granta)

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (trans. Sophie Hughes, published by Text)

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq (trans. Deepa Bhasthi, published by And Other Stories)

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (trans. Mark Hutchinson, published by Lolli Editions)

For the first time in the history of the Prize, all six shortlisted books are published by independent publishers.

The International Booker Prize is given every year to a novel of fiction or collection of short stories written in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The prize money is divided equally between the winning writer and translator, and each of the shortlisted writer and translator also receives £2500 (AU$5374) each.