The Shadow Shortlist for the 2025 International Booker Prize
And then there were six...
The official judges of the 2025 International Booker Prize announced their shortlist almost a week ago with lovely video, graphics, and commentary that seemed to turn up the volume from previous years. Our shadow panel absorbed the news quietly, and assembled yesterday on Zoom to finalize our selections for our own shortlist. Which is never the same as the official one.
“How do you go about this?” you ask? We begin with the official longlist (spared the hard work of reading over 150 books to arrive at that point), and start reading. Thanks to Paul Fulcher who sets up and maintains our spreadsheets, we individually track where we are in the reading process, if we are having trouble acquiring some of the books so that we can share sources and pdfs, and then score each book across three different fields. The spreadsheet automatically calculates the rankings. Much more scientific than the way we determine our winner. Which is a story best saved for later. And here is our shortlist.
On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber)
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Pushkin Press)
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson (Small Axes)
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson (Lolli Editions)
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton (Viking)
There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from the French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaun Press)
So we agree with the official judges on three counts, and then go our own way. Solenoid is an interesting departure because based upon the way we choose books, it was certain to make the cut for all its obvious merits, but we are not the representatives of an important literary prize. A prize that may have an agenda of its own, a theme to follow, a quest to champion translated fiction, etc. Solenoid was the thing not like the others in the official longlist, and some of us felt certain that we would not see it on their shortlist. And we didn’t.
Our choices also do not reflect a unanimous celebration of each book that landed on our shortlist. One book in particular (hint, it has a very pink cover) had extreme reactions to both sides of the scoring spectrum. But our conversation was all the richer for our disagreements, and that is the beauty of our efforts together. Whether it is on Slack or through emails or across time zones on Zoom, we have a healthy consideration of each other’s opinions that makes this effort one of my favorite reading experiences every year. But that’s enough from me. Below are some comments from other shadow judges.
“I found the discussion very therapeutic. It made me realise that perhaps I'd been too harsh on Small Boat (which was the first book I read and scored, before I had the chance to compare it properly to others on the list), but which I actually did not mind seeing on either the official judges' or our Shadow Panel shortlist. Alas, I was unable to change my fellow shadowers' minds about Hunchback (they liked it, I liked it less), but it dawned on me that perhaps the reason why I scored it so low was that I had such high expectations of it when reading about the subject matter and the fact that it had won the Akutagawa Prize. I ordered it as soon as I heard it was coming out, read it before it was even longlisted for the International Booker... but then felt let down by it.
What would I have chosen instead of Hunchback? The other Japanese book, of course. Under the Eye of the Big Bird was strange, imaginative and quite frightening without being as gruelling to read as some of the others on the longlist.” (Marina Sofia)
“A quick note. I feel this year's longlist maybe signposts a change in reading habits for the general public with most of the books being short novelllas. All barring Solenoid which has made our cut is this new short fiction in translation a one off this year or the way the public is wanting a less intense reading experience. As a reader myself I connected more with this year than last year’s longlist. But would like a couple more chunky reads but that is just a couple of books on my radar that missed the cut.” (Stu Allen)
“The judges this year gave us a rich longlist to select from, and we've chosen a strong and varied shortlist, one, dare I say, that includes some of the more ambitious books on the list that fell away from the official selection - from the idea-packed 640 pages of Solenoid to the provocative novella Hunchback. I'm particularly delighted to see There's a Monster Behind the Door on our shortlist, which recently won the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses, of which I'm a Trustee, the judges accurately describing it as a "rollicking, sardonic picaresque". And the whole list is a testament to the importance of small presses in bringing translated literary fiction to UK and Irish readers.
While all 6 books on our list deserve their place, I'm a little sad that we couldn't find room for Heart Lamp, a masterpiece of what the translator has described as "stretch[ing] English so that it too can speak somewhat with the accent of the original language".” (Paul Fulcher)