Like last year, the 2025 International Booker Prize longlist is out of left field. Former winners, who I thought were a lock, were shut out (Han Kang, Olga Tokarczuk, László Krasznahorkai) and some of these translations were published in North America before the UK, which is unusual. But the most surprising thing about this longlist is that every author is an IBP first-timer. Past longlisters like Yoko Ogawa were shut out too. 

I have to think this was on purpose, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Does Han Kang need this, months after winning the Nobel? Surely not. Is each of these 13 books better than her latest, We Do Not Part, which I read because I was so certain it would be longlisted? Highly unlikely.  

2025’s longlist is diverse, representing ten original languages and eleven nationalities. There are a couple of short story collections, several novellas (the shortest of which is practically a short story itself at 112 pages,) and one near-700 page chunkster. The list is skewed towards women (9 of 13) and boomers (6 of 13), and trends a bit older in general. There is no Gen Z representation at all, and the millennials are of the elder variety.

Find these stats and everything you need to know about obtaining these books in Canada in the updated “How to read the IBP in Canada” spreadsheet, or if you’re in a hurry, you can refer to the plain-text longlist below.

The longlist is fairly accessible in Canada. By the end of March, all the books will be available from Blackwell’s for the bargain price of $337.23 CAD. If you prefer to spend your money locally (elbows up and all that) most of them will be available through Canadian retailers too, with the exception of Small Boat and There’s A Monster Behind the Door. I’m just disappointed that my library system has none of these in ebook format. If Kobo thinks I’m going to spend $25.99 on a 192-page ebook (Eurotrash), they’ve got another thing coming. 

I don’t quite know what to make of the longlist, but I’ve already read one (On the Calculation of Volume I, the first in a septology, but not the first partial septology to be longlisted!) and have another seven on the way, either from Blackwells, Magpie Books, or the library. In the meantime, the IBP Shadow Panel has created a Substack to round up their reviews. They are without their usual leader, Tony from Tony’s Reading List – he’s still blogging though, so if you want to see what’s going on in translated lit outside of this list, he’s your guy.

If you want to know my thoughts, well, let’s see if I can crank out a few reviews. First challenge: say something about On the Calculation of Volume, a story about a woman who wakes up to the same day over and over again, without mentioning Groundhog Day. 

• The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon
• On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
• There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from the French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
• Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter
• Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches
• Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson
• Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton
• Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Under the Eye of the Big Bird, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda
• Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated from the German by Daniel Bowles
• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes
• Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi
• On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott
• A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson