Image: Booker Prize Foundation, Yuki Sugiura
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
The Winner To Be Named May 20 at the Tate Modern
Today in London (April 8), the six-title shortlist has been announced for the International Booker Prize, the sister award to the better-known Booker Prize for Fiction.
This honor, focused on translated work and established in 2005, was adjusted from a biennial prize to an annual one a decade later, with the stipulation that entries must be written in a non-English language and translated into English and published, in this cycle, between October 1, 2024, and September 30 of this year in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
A win pays £50,000 (US$63,929), which is divided between the winning author and translator (or translators where a book has more than one). Each of those shortlisted titles is to be given £5,000 (US$6,392).
An event announcing the 2025 winner of the International Booker Prize is to be live-streamed on May 20 from London’s Tate Modern, which toasts its own 25th anniversary this year.
An All-Independently Published Shortlist
For the first time in the prize’s history, all six shortlisted books are published by independent publishers, including the first nomination for Leeds-based Small Axes.
Granta Books has published the winning book on two previous occasions (2016 and 2024), while Faber (2020) and Fitzcarraldo Editions (2018) have both won before.
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson, will be distributed in partnership with Penguin Books starting on April 17.
The 2025 International Booker Prize Shortlist
| Title | Original Language | Author | Author Nationality | Translator(s) | Translator Nationality | UK Publisher/Imprint |
| On the Calculation of Volume 1 | Danish | Solvej Balle | Danish | Barbara J Haveland | Scottish | Faber & Faber |
| Small Boat | French | Vincent Delacroix | French | Helen Stevenson | British | Small Axes |
| Under the Eye of the Big Bird | Japanese | Hiromi Kawakami | Japanese | Asa Yoneda | Japanese | Granta Books |
| Perfection | Italian | Vincenzo Latronico | Italian | Sophie Hughes | British | Fitzcarraldo Editions |
| Heart Lamp | Kannada | Banu Mushtaq | Indian | Deepa Bhasthi | Indian | And Other Stories |
| A Leopard-Skin Hat | French | Anne Serre | French | Mark Hutchinson | British | Lolli Editions |
Jury Rationale
Max Porter, chair of the 2025 jury, is quoted, saying, “This shortlist is the result of a life-enhancing conversation between myself and my fellow judges. Reading 154 books in six months made us feel like high-speed Question Machines hurtling through space.
Max Porter
“Our selected six awakened an appetite in us to question the world around us: How am I seeing or being seen? How are we translating each other, all the time? How are we trapped in our bodies, in our circumstances, in time, and what are our options for freedom? Who has a voice? In discussing these books we have been considering again and again what it means to be a human being now. …
“We haven’t chosen these six books because we are book experts who think people need to be told what to read. We have chosen them because we need them, we found them, and we love them.
“We need literature that shocks, delights., and baffles and reveals how weird many of us feel about the way we are living now. Ultimately, these books widen the view. They enhance the quality of conversation we are all having. They don’t shut down debate, they generate it. They don’t have all the answers, but they ask extraordinary questions.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on both Booker Prize programs is here. More on the International Booker Prize is here, more on translation is here, and more from us on international publishing and book awards programs in general is here.
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