The Booker Prize 2025: How the Winner Is Chosen and How to Read Along

The Booker Prize 2025: How the Winner Is Chosen and How to Read Along

The Booker Prize is one of the few literary awards that reliably makes the news. Every year a panel of five readers works through well over a hundred novels, argues about them behind closed doors, and produces a longlist, a shortlist and a winner. For anyone who reads for pleasure, the months between those announcements are the good part: bookshop tables stacked with unfamiliar titles, friends comparing notes, and the quiet discovery of a novel you would never have found on your own.

The 2025 prize went to David Szalay for Flesh, announced at the ceremony in London in November, with Roddy Doyle chairing the panel. Here is how a decision like that gets made — and how to join in when the next cycle begins.

Who picks the winner

The Booker Prize Foundation appoints a panel of five judges each year: a chair and four others. Recent panels have mixed novelists with critics, booksellers, academics and broadcasters, on the sensible theory that different reading habits produce a better argument. None of them is a full-time judge. They have novels to finish, reviews to file, bookshops to run and students to teach alongside all that reading.

Publishers do the entering. Eligible novels — fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland within the prize's window — are submitted by their publishers, who can put forward a limited number of titles each. Translated fiction has its own award, the International Booker, so the novels in contention here were written in English from the start.

What arrives is a substantial pile. More than a hundred novels are entered in a typical year, and the judges read them through the spring and summer. There is no scoring sheet and no fixed rubric. The rules simply ask for the best novel of the year; deciding what that means is the panel's job, and it happens in conversation rather than by checklist.

From submissions to the longlist

The process begins long before readers see a single title. Publishers submit their eligible novels in the spring and summer, usually with publication dates falling between October and the following September. The judges receive a mountain of proof copies, manuscripts and finished hardbacks, then spend weeks reading at a pace that would break most book clubs. They are not expected to finish every page of every submission before discussion begins, but they are expected to have read widely enough to speak with authority about the books that matter.

By late July or early August, the panel agrees on a longlist — often called the "Booker Dozen," even when it contains twelve or thirteen titles. This is the first public statement of taste. A longlist can include famous names, small independent presses, debut novelists and experimental forms. It can also leave out a heavily hyped book, which is part of why the announcement generates so much conversation. The longlist is not a ranking. It is a group of books the judges believe deserve a second, more careful reading.

That second reading is crucial. A novel that dazzles on first pass may feel thinner on a second. A quieter book may reveal its architecture only after the plot is known. Judges often talk about the books that "stayed" with them: images, sentences, characters that kept returning in the weeks after they turned the last page. That lingering quality is not a formal criterion, but it is often what separates a good novel from a prize-winning one.

The shortlist and the final argument

From the longlist, the judges choose a shortlist of six. This is where the prize starts to feel like a real contest. Publishers order extra print runs, bookshops build displays, and readers who have been meaning to try a title suddenly have a deadline. The shortlist is also where the judges' disagreements become sharper. With six books left, it is no longer enough to admire a novel; the panel has to argue that it is better — more urgent, more original, more moving — than the other five.

The final meeting is long and private. There is no public transcript, no scorecard and no audience. The chair guides the discussion, makes sure quieter judges speak, and tries to find the shape of a consensus. Sometimes the winner emerges quickly. Sometimes the panel returns to the same two books for hours. In the end, the prize goes to the novel that can survive the most scrutiny and still feel alive.

The winner receives £50,000, and each shortlisted author receives £2,500. The ceremony itself is televised, with speeches, photographs and the usual mix of relief and disappointment. But the money and the trophy are only part of the story. The real prize, for most authors, is the readership that follows.

Why the 2025 winner felt both surprising and right

David Szalay's Flesh is a good example of how the Booker can reward a novel that is neither sprawling nor obviously topical. Szalay has long been admired for his spare, precise prose, and Flesh is a life story told in sharp, unadorned scenes. It follows a man across decades, through work, sex, violence, loneliness and the slow accumulation of consequences. It is not a book that explains itself. It asks the reader to fill in the gaps, and that restraint is exactly what many critics and judges found powerful.

Roddy Doyle, as chair, brought a novelist's eye and a populist instinct to the panel. Doyle's own work is funny, direct and deeply human, and he has never been impressed by literary posturing. A Booker winner chosen under his chairmanship was always likely to combine craft with readability. That does not mean the decision was easy. In a year with strong shortlisted books, the winner is the one that manages to be both admired and loved — a difficult double act.

How to read along with the next Booker cycle

The best way to enjoy the Booker is not to wait for the winner. The prize is a season, not a single announcement, and you can join it at any point. Here is a practical plan for the next cycle.

1. Start with the longlist, not the shortlist

The longlist is the most interesting stage. It is long enough to contain surprises and short enough to feel manageable if you pick your spots. You do not have to read all twelve or thirteen books. Choose three or four that appeal to you, and read them before the shortlist is announced. You will already have opinions when the conversation heats up.

2. Make your own shortlist

After the longlist appears, give each book you read a simple score out of ten for prose, character, structure, ambition and emotional impact. Then choose your own six. When the official shortlist is announced, compare it with yours. The gaps are often more revealing than the overlaps. Did the judges value experimentation more than you did? Did they reward a book you found cold? Did they ignore a crowd-pleaser you loved?

3. Use the official resources

The Booker Prize website publishes extracts, interviews, podcasts and judges' comments. These are useful when a book feels difficult or when you want to understand why a particular title made the cut. Reading an interview with an author after finishing their novel can deepen your sense of what they were attempting, even if you did not fully admire the result.

4. Join a shadow panel

A shadow panel is simply a group of readers who judge the prize alongside the official judges. It can be a few friends,

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