The Booker Prize has been criticised in recent years for prioritising youth and novelty over maturity, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times . That charge cannot be levelled against the 2025 judging panel, chaired by Roddy Doyle: their shortlist, announced last week, comprises “six books by seasoned novelists between the ages of 46 and 64”. Only one, Kiran Desai – nominated for her third novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”, a “vast love story” set in India and America – has written fewer than six books. It’s also a shortlist that “celebrates good old-fashioned literary fiction”. The judges seem to have deliberately avoided novels relying on “gimmicky conceit or stylistic flashiness”.

Radically different approaches

That’s not quite true, said Anthony Cummins in The Observer

See Full Page