Each year, book lovers around the world eagerly await the announcement of the Booker Prize shortlist.

In 2025, the addition of actor-turned-publisher Sarah Jessica Parker to the judging panel only added to the frisson that surrounds the prestigious literary award.

Last year, local author Charlotte Wood was shortlisted for her novel Stone Yard Devotional, the first Australian to make the shortlist since Richard Flanagan won for The Narrow Road to the Deep North in 2014. The prize ultimately went to British writer Samantha Harvey for her novella, Orbital.

2025 Booker Prize shortlist Flashlight by Susan Choi

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Audition by Katie Kitamura

The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Flesh by David Szalay

This year's shortlist is dominated by American writers (Susan Choi, Katie Kitamura and Ben Markovits), who appear alongside two Brits (Andrew Miller and David Szalay) and an Indian author (Kiran Desai).

Together with the reading public, the authors of the six books to make this year's shortlist will find out who will take home the £50,000 ($100,000) prize in a ceremony in London on November 10.

To take a closer look at the list — and to speculate on who will win in 2025 — we've brought together The Book Show's Claire Nichols and Sarah L'Estrange, The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and writer and critic Declan Fry.

Books about outsiders

Claire Nichols: I think it's a great list. The books are super readable. They're all very different. No matter who's on the panel, the Booker judges always seem to find fabulous reads.

Sarah L'Estrange: For me, the books all explore our existential estrangement from each other and even from ourselves, as in Audition. They're all trying to work out ways to bridge that gap, which is what good literary fiction does.

They're all about outsiders as well. We've got Sonia and Sunny; they're outsiders in America and very lonely. In Flesh, we've got István; he's an outsider in his hometown in Hungary, then in England, and even to himself, because we never really get into his head.

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Flashlight has fabulously difficult characters who are bumping up against each other, outsiders from the Korean American union, and in The Land in Winter, we've got these tw