Banu Mushtaq (ಬಾನು ಮುಷ್ತಾಕ್), India
Jenny Erpenbeck, Germany
(Photo by Heike Huslage-Koch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Georgi Gospodinov (Георги Господинов), Bulgaria
(photo by "Mrs Robinson" at Bulgarian Wikipedia - Image in the public domain, taken and reproduced with the author's permission)
David Diop, France
(photo by Hermance Triay)
Samantha Harvey (Ditton, Kent, United Kingdom, 1975) won the 2024 Booker Prize with her fifth novel, Orbital. The story follows six astronauts of different nationalities aboard the International Space Station in a 24-hour period. In each of their sixteen orbits around Earth during that time frame, they all share their reflections on existence, isolation, and environmental fragility. In between chapters, other unrelated voices are introduced.
Below, the official video of the announcement during the award ceremony, with Lynch's acceptance speech
Banu Mushtaq (Hassan, Karnataka, India, 1948) is the International Winner for 2025. Along with her translator, Deepa Bhasthi, Mushtaq won with Heart Lamp, the first book written originally in the Kannada language and the first story collection to win this prize. Bhasthi is also the first Indian translator ever awarded a Booker. Taking inspiration from her work as a life-long activist, a lawyer and an advocate for women's rights, in these collected stories Mushtaq depicts the lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in Southern India and the challenges they face from a highly-conservative and male-dominated society.
Below, panel chair Max Porter announces the 2025 winners, with acceptance speeches from both Mushtaq and Bhasthi:
Since 2002, the Booker Prize Foundation is responsible for the Booker award. In 2005, the Institution also established the bi-annual International award (to become annual, with different rules, from 2016 onwards).
Booker Prize
The prize was launched in 1969 with the aim to promote the reading of quality fiction in the UK and has since become the leading British literary award. Every year it rewards the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a British, Irish or Commonwealth author and first published in the year leading up to the award.
International Booker Prize