International Booker Prize Shortlist Bundle £72 (RRP £80.94)

The 2025 shortlist for the International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, has been announced. Here, we take a closer look at the six remarkable books, the stories behind them, their common themes and their many differences.   

The books shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 are:   

• On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland  
• Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson 
• Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda  
• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes   
• Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi  
• A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson  

From the too-perfect interiors of a Berlin apartment to a terrifying journey across the English Channel; from patriarchal communities in southern India to a futuristic world at the limits of our imagination; the six shortlisted books place a huge variety of human experiences under the microscope.  

Though newly published in English, there are books here that were decades in the making – some of the stories collected in Heart Lamp were first published in the 1990s; Solvej Balle came up with the idea for On the Calculation of Volume in the 1980s; A Leopard-Skin Hat is inspired by a life-long relationship between the author and her sister.  

These are books about survival and self-preservation – about our indomitable instinct to keep going in the face of catastrophe, oppression, extinction or hopelessness. In a world that can often seem full of despair, this is a shortlist that celebrates the human spirit – our capacity to endure and our impulse to live a better life. 

(Titles may take a couple of days to arrive as shortlisted books often sell out and go to reprint straight away when the list is announced)