Best books of 2025: Fiction

Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Choi’s Booker Prize-shortlisted generational saga sweeps 50 years and three continents but has at its centre — chronologically and emotionally — the mysterious disappearance of a Korean academic from the coast of Japan in 1977. Choi’s great skill lies in her ability to craft the stories of Serk, his daughter, his wife and his countries into an utterly compelling whole.

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Faber/S&S/Summit Books) Markovits’s midlife-crisis road trip opens 12 years after Tom’s discovery of his wife’s affair, when he vowed to leave as soon as their youngest went to college. That day has come. The liveliest read on this year’s Booker shortlist is a first-person, self-conscious and introspective account that often brings to mind Tom’s own admission that “at some level everything you feel or think is a kind of taking sides”.

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett (Fitzcarraldo/Riverhead Books)
In stream-of-consciousness-style entries, an unnamed protagonist documents her move from an apartment in an unnamed city to a house in the countryside. But the real story, that which she returns to obsessively, is her unusual relationship with an older man (who, tellingly, is given a name). Bennett’s innovative fictional voice is supremely successful at mirroring our most ruminative thoughts.

Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape/Scribner)
We meet István as a vulnerable teenager who is groomed by a neighbour, with catastrophic consequences. A series of jump-cuts follows the young Hungarian to England, where strokes of fortune lead him to seemingly impossible heights. Yet each dramatic turn — and downturn — is rendered in Szalay’s spare, almost playfully restrained prose. A deeply impressive novel and deserving winner of this year’s Booker Prize for fiction.

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld (Doubleday/Random House)
Sittenfeld’s exquisitely paced short stories, from the stomach-churning online shaming of “White Women LOL” to reunion-triggered reflections on boarding school in “Lost But Not Forgotten”, lay bare the hang-ups, preoccupations and nostalgia of mostly middle-aged protagonists. This is only the author’s second short-story collection — she has published seven novels — but her trademark wit and efficiency are a perfect match for the form.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton/Hogarth)
The former Booker winner was one of the bookies’ favourites to win again this year for her shortlisted tale of thwarted love between two young Indians in the US. Desai amplifies the experiences of Sonia Shah and Sunny Bhatia to tell a vast story of migration, family, belonging, and the loneliness that can stem from our attempts to respond to the expectations of others.

The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
In Rushdie’s first work of fiction since the 2022 knife attack that left him with life-changing injuries, his characters face the “slow failing of the soft machine”. These short stories feature the dead, the bereaved, those who believe they are telling their tale for the last time; yet Rushdie’s wry sense of mischief is undimmed.

Helm by Sarah Hall (Faber/Mariner Books)
The UK’s only named wind is the unlikely protagonist of Hall’s experimental, sardonic, suitably wild narrative. It’s a brave move to personify, and therefore contain, such an unpredictable natural force but Hall does so with brio, and Helm’s setting — the Pennines in northern England — sharpens the focus of a novel whose lesser, human characters range from stone-age visionaries to contemporary climate scientists.

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Thursday: Fiction by Maria Crawford
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Saturday: Critics’ choice

Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape/Penguin Press)
Hicks McTaggart is a prohibition-era Milwaukee gumshoe who has been pressed into tracking down and bringing home Daphne Airmont, a “Cheez Heiress on the Run” in Europe. Cue a wild ride of gangsters, gun-running U-boats and international dairy cartels. Will this be Pynchon’s last novel? As with the 88-year-old’s antic plots, we can never be sure — but let’s hope there is more to come. 

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4th Estate/Knopf)
“I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being,” says one of the narrators of Adichie’s polyphonic tale of four women — three Nigerian, one Guinean — living in the US. This longing lingers and resurfaces through Dream Count, which is framed by a lockdown’s obstacle to meaningful relationships. In fiercely intelligent writing, Adichie builds a convincing case for the power of female friendship. 

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