Mircea Cărtărescu, Hiromi Kawakami and Christian Kracht are among the writers to have made this year’s “unconventional” International Booker longlist.
All 13 writers on the list are nominated for the first time, while one translator, Sophie Hughes, appears for a record-breaking fifth time with her rendering of Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection.
They are now in contention for the £50,000 prize for the best book translated to English, which will be divided equally between the winning author and translators.
Quick Guide
The International Booker prize 2025 longlist
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The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon (And Other Stories)
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland (Faber)
There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaun Press)
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter (Pushkin)
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary (Scribe)
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson (Small Axes)
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton (Viking)
Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda (Granta)
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles (Serpent’s Tail)
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes (Fitzcarraldo)
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories)
On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated by Lucy Scott (Tilted Axis)
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson (Lolli)
The 2025 list features the highest-ever number of independent publishers, with 12 of 13 titles coming from indie presses.
Though the most recent Nobel prize in literature winner Han Kang was eligible for this year’s prize with her book We Do Not Part, translated from Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, she did not make the list. Kang won the International Booker in 2016 with her breakthrough novel, The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith.
Cărtărescu is the first Romanian author to be longlisted for the prize, with his novel Solenoid, translated by Sean Cotter. Set in late 1970s and early 1980s communist Bucharest, Solenoid begins with the diaristic reflections of a teacher before expanding into an existential, surrealist account of the narrator’s journey through alternate realities. Last May, it won the €100,000 Dublin literary award.
Along with Romanian, a second language, Kannada – spoken by approximately 38 million people, primarily in the state of Karnataka in southwest India – also features for the first time in the prize’s history with Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi.
Japanese writer Kawakami, best known for her novel Strange Weather in Tokyo, was chosen for her novel-in-stories Under the Eye of the Big Bird. Set in a future in which humans are on the verge of extinction, its voice is “marvellously captured by translator Asa Yoneda”, writes James Bradley in a Guardian review.
At 288 pages, Kawakami’s book is among the longest on the list: 11 of the 13 books come in at under 250 pages, with eight under 200.
One of the slimmer titles, at 192 pages, is Kracht’s Eurotrash, translated from German by Daniel Bowles. The novel follows a middle-aged writer on a road trip through Switzerland with his terminally ill mother. “Their journey takes them through a number of blackly comic set pieces at a vegetarian commune, a private airstrip and inside a broken-down ski lift,” writes Marcel Theroux in the Guardian.
This year’s longlist sees an Iraqi translator nominated for the first time, with The Book of Disappearance by Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon. When Palestinians suddenly disappear, a friend of one of the vanished begins searching for clues in what John Self described as a “rich, potent novel”.
This year brings a record for the longest period between an original-language publication and International Booker prize longlisting. On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer was first published in Dutch 43 years ago, and is now translated into English by Lucy Scott.
Also on the longlist are On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland; There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert; Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary; Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson; Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton; and A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson.
Author and judging chair Max Porter said that he hopes the “unconventional” longlist will “exhilarate” readers. “These books bring us into the agony of family, workplace or nation-state politics, the near-spiritual secrecy of friendship, the inner architecture of erotic feeling, the banality of capitalism and the agitations of faith,” he said.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on 8 April, with the winner revealed at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on 20 May.
Alongside Porter on this year’s judging panel are poet Caleb Femi, writer Sana Goyal, author and translator Anton Hur, and musician Beth Orton.
The judges selected the longlist from 154 books submitted by publishers. The 2025 prize was open to works of long-form fiction and collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland between 1 May 2024 and 30 April 2025.
Along with Kang, previous writers to have won the award include Olga Tokarczuk and Lucas Rijneveld. Last year, Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann won the prize for Kairos.
To explore all of the books on the longlist for the International Booker prize 2025 visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Article by:Source: Ella Creamer
