If the Booker Prize longlist mirrors the human condition, we might want to look away.
First awarded in 1969, the Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary honours. Awarded yearly to an original novel published in the United Kingdom, the Booker Prize is expected to be a hallmark of great fiction, priding itself on highlighting the best of contemporary literature.
As an avid reader, I’ve always followed along with and enjoyed Booker-nominated fiction. However, for an award that prides itself on highlighting the human experience, this year’s longlist paints a startlingly bleak portrait of humanity.
In a post-pandemic world with high levels of loneliness and feelings of hopelessness, the last thing we need is literature that exacerbates these unpleasant effects. The initial aim of the Booker Prize was to stimulate discussions on contemporary fiction.
Yet recent nominees have had the opposite effect, leaving readers brooding and reflective, rather than eager to discuss the work with their peers. The 2025 International shortlist was released last month, including a favourite of mine—an ittedly depressing read—Anne Serre’s A Leopard Skin Hat. The novel follows the narrator as he grapples with a close friend’s suicide. The 2025 shortlist also includes Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. The novel follows Anna and Tom, a millennial couple whose lives appear flawless at first glance. Yet this outward perfection doesn’t prevent the narrator from filling over 100 pages with musings on ‘the emptiness of contemporary existence.’
However, the wave of literary gloom isn’t confined to this year’s shortlist—it’s become a defining trend in recent Booker Prize nominees.
Last year’s winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, follows a team of astronauts during a single day as they circle the Earth, collecting meteorological data and conversing on the nature and value of humanity. With a sparse plot, featuring few action sequences, the novel pushes a central thesis that humans should work harder to preserve their connection to the earth. The prize committee praised Orbital as a “book about a wounded world,” correctly describing the haunting feeling that follows the reader throughout.
Continuing the theme of despair, the 2023 shortlist paints a bleak picture: five out of six novels center on struggling, impoverished families, with two delving into themes of domestic abuse. While poverty, grief, and abuse are undeniably part of the human experience, so too are joy and love—elements I’ve found increasingly scarce among recent Booker nominees. It’s important to highlight all facets of the human experience, to celebrate the good things, without exclusively ruminating on the bad. The latter risks forming unnecessarily negative outlooks among readers.
Upsetting fiction has its place among Booker nominations. 2025 international nominee Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq details the everyday lives of women and girls in southern India. Heart Lamp deserves recognition for its literary merit, as well as for spreading awareness about classism and religious oppression in southern India. Booker’s novels, such as Orbital and Perfection, which are more focused on the futility of existence, rather than real-world problems, should stay off the shortlist.
If the Booker Prize truly aims to capture the breadth of human experience, then it must reward fiction that not only promotes despair but also humour and hope. Though novels such as A Leopard Skin Hat have threads of joy and appreciation for the world woven throughout, it doesn’t do enough to distract from the overwhelmingly depressing tone of the novel.
There’s a reason why Shakespeare’s tragedies were often considered equal in measure to his comedies, as both reflect important elements of humanity. The Booker Prize committee needs to do more to encourage work that not only challenges its readers, but also reminds them why life is worth the struggle.
Cloey is a fourth-year Politics, Philosophy, and Economics student and The Journal’s Editorials Editor
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