Andrew Miller is bookies’ favourite to win 2025 Booker prize | Booker prize

Andrew Miller is the bookies’ favorite to win the 2025 Booker prize, which will be announced in London on Monday evening.

The British author tops William Hill’s odds at 6/4 for The Land in Winter, his novel set in 1960s England and about two marriages struggling under the weight of post-war class divisions, professional relocations and emotional alienation. Miller was previously shortlisted for the Booker in 2001 for his novel Oxygen.

Kiran Desai is Miller’s closest rival at 2/1 in The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, the Indian author’s first novel in almost two decades. The approximately 700-page book traces the lives of two young Indians living in the USA at the turn of the millennium. This is Desai’s third novel and her first since The Inheritance of Loss, which won her the Booker prize in 2006. If he wins again, Desai will become the fifth writer to win the award twice, after JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

Hungarian-British author David Szalay has also seen a recent uptick in betting in recent days; Flesh shortening decreased from 4/1 to 9/4. Set between Hungary and London, the novel tells the story of one man’s rags-to-riches story over the course of decades.

The rest of the shortlist includes Susan Choi’s Flashlight, a sprawling family saga; Katie Kitamura’s psychological work Audition; and The Rest of Our Lives, a midlife journey novel by Ben Markovits.

“This year’s Booker prize remains an open race ahead of Monday’s announcement, with Andrew Miller trailing Kiran Desai at 6/4,” William Hill spokesman Lee Phelps said. “Desai, the 2006 winner, is just behind Miller’s The Land in Winter; we’re at 2/1, and he’s picked up another Booker prize almost 20 years after his first for The Inheritance of Loss. This year’s field looks extremely narrow, with little to separate the six contenders.”

Established in 1969, the Booker prize is awarded annually to the best original novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner receives £50,000 and the prize is known for increasing its recipients’ international profile and sales.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan and most recently Samantha Harvey, who won the 2024 prize for her space station novel Orbital.

A total of 153 novels were submitted for this year’s award, which was judged by a panel chaired by Irish author Roddy Doyle and including actor Sarah Jessica Parker as well as writers Chris Power, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Kiley Reid.