The literary world is abuzz as the countdown begins to the Booker Prize 2025 continues. This year’s longlist offers an eclectic mix of bold debuts and masterful storytelling, spanning continents, histories, and deeply personal journeys. The winner will be reaveled on November 10.

Here are four standout titles to add to your reading list before the winner is crowned.

Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

Xhoga’s debut novel follows an Albanian interpreter in New York who, while working with a Kosovar torture survivor, becomes increasingly entangled in her clients’ traumas and her own buried past.

Audition by Katie Kitamura

This novel follows a tense lunch between a celebrated actress and a mysterious young man whose connection to her is unclear, unravelling a web of shifting identities and hidden truths. Through competing narratives, it challenges our assumptions about love and the roles we inhabit in life and art.

Endling by Maria Reva

Set against the backdrop of Ukraine in 2022, this debut novel follows Yeva, a scientist funding her rare snail research through romance tours, and sisters Nastia and Solomiya, who use the same industry as cover to search for their missing mother. Their paths collide in a wild, urgent journey across a country, joined by a truck of kidnapped bachelors and one endangered snail.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

When 10-year-old Louisa’s father vanishes during a summer in Japan, the loss fractures her family and leaves behind a mystery that lingers for decades. Spanning Japan, America, and North Korea, the novel traces how memory, identity and history intertwine to reveal the hidden truths of one family’s past.