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The finalists for the Booker Prize 2025 have been announced! These six novels include three authors shortlisted for the prize for the first time, as well as a previous Booker Prize winner.

The Booker Prize honors the best work of fiction written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland annually. It began in 1969 and has become an honor that can catapult a book and author’s career. The winner of the Booker Prize takes home £50,000, or about $67,000 USD.

Five judges comprise the panel that determines the finalists. They include authors, publishers, journalists, politicians, artists, and more. Books published between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025, are eligible, and this time frame starts to hint at the kinds of books we might begin to see making “best of” and other honor lists throughout the rest of the year.

The finalists include authors from three continents representing four nationalities. Their stories take place in Hungary, Japan, Italy, the United States, India, and England. The shortest book on the shortlist is under 200 pages, while the longest is over 700.

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The Booker Prize winner will be announced November 10th.

Learn more about each of the finalists at the Booker Prize website.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

The post The Shortlist for the Booker Prize 2025 Has Been Announced appeared first on Our Story Insight.

I called Peak Adaptation way too many times. I have done the same with Booktok writ large. I am not making the same mistake with Romantasy. That said, elaborate costume balls that pay dark-haired dudes thousands of dollars to cosplay as fantasy book characters is really testing my resolve. Question: does the market for these events dry up if/when there is a big-time adaptation of one of the major series? Or does it heighten it? And what is the IP/copyright situation here? Does the Renaissance fair community know about this? Is there someone with a turkey leg and a flimsy set of armor sweltering in a fairground somewhere, not realizing they missed the boat on these?

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The post The 2025 PEN Finalists Announced appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Here are the Finalists for the International Booker Prize

A couple of interesting features of the 2025 finalists. First: they are short, with the longest topping out at 278 pages and most of them even under 200 pages. Perhaps relatedly, all the selection were published by independent presses (aka not big 5). This is both a surprise and not: we are accustomed to major awards nominees coming from the big houses except in one field: translation. So, here we are.

Printed Books Seem to Be Exempt From Tariffs. But Probably Not Paper.

Publisher’s Lunch (sub req.) does the dirty work of finding the documentation that shows that books printed in other countries are exempt from the current tariff plans, but notably paper itself is not. Quite a bit of paper comes from overseas, which weirdly might have the strange effect of these tariffs making printing overseas more cost-efficient than importing paper and printing the books in the U.S. Not sure which move this is in 3D chess.

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Most Americans want to read more books. We just don’t.

I’m trying to parse exactly which results in this NPR/Ipsos poll support the headline claim. Maybe the 63% of respondents who say they want to be a better reader? Better is not necessarily more, though. Weirdly, there is not a question that asks directly “would you like to read more books than you currently do?” or something of the like. Still, quite a few fascinating results, along with some frustrating ones. 41% of respondents said that that audiobooks don’t count as reading, so I guess we still have to keep shouting that yes, yes they do.

Our own Liberty Hardy writes an appreciation and retrospective of Ishiguro’s masterwork. One of the few books I have no hesitation calling a modern classic.

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The post International Booker Shortlist Announced appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Below are the five finalists.

Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj

James by Percival Everett

Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

The 45th Annual PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration will take place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., on May 15 this year. It will feature presentations by PEN/Faulkner judges, original readings by the winner and finalists, and a celebration of this year’s PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion, Dr. Carla Hayden.

The winner of the prize will receive $15,000, while each of the finalists gets $5,000.

To learn more about the finalists and the award, visit PEN/Faulkner.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.

The post 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalists Announced appeared first on Our Story Insight.