The Books That Shaped 2025
From Booker nominees to franchise favourites
2025 has been a good year for literature.
In a year defined by political whiplash, climate anxiety, and cultural exhaustion, books did what they’ve always done best: slow us down and force us to feel. The titles that shaped 2025 weren’t escapist so much as confrontational, probing family, power, loneliness, labour, and survival across genres and geographies.
From sweeping epics and speculative futures to intimate portraits of grief, ambition, and care, the most popular books of the year captured the emotional temperature of the moment. They asked uncomfortable questions, blurred moral binaries, and lingered long after the final page. Check them out below.
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Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s memoir is as much a story about her mother, activist and educator Mary Roy, as it is about her. The book explores the complicated relationship between the two women, each accomplished on their own accord, in the backdrop of the events that shook - and shaped - India as we know it today. It can be a pretty emotionally difficult read at times, and whether you love Mary Roy or hate her, you can’t help but root for the two protagonists in their fleeting moments of solidarity.
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq
Banu Mushtaq won the International Booker Prize for her short story collection about the struggles and pressures of Kannada Muslim women. The stories are a scathing, sometimes absurd critique of power structures (think Han Kang’s The Vegetarian), and Deepa Bhasthi took special care to maintain the linguistic nuances of Kannada while translating the book into English.
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Spanning 1996 to 2002, Kiran Desai's second Booker Prize–nominated novel follows NRIs Sunny and Sonia as they navigate loneliness, homesickness, and adulthood in New York City. Years after a failed attempt at an arranged marriage, a chance meeting on a train in India brings them together. What follows is a tender, slow-burning romance, nearly 700 pages long, but deeply rewarding.
A Guardian and A Thief, by Megha Majumdar
Set in a near-future Kolkata hit by heat waves and an incoming famine, Megha Majumdar’s climate change novel is about two families: the “guardian” Ma (Bengali for mother), who is about to emigrate to Michigan with her family to escape the climate crisis, and the “thief” Boomba, who steals her visa in a desperate bid to provide for his family. As the story unfolds, the boundaries of good and bad start blurring, till you realise that the epithets in the title are equally applicable to both the leads.
Sunrise On The Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Suzanne Collins' second prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, Sunrise On The Reaping, is a critique of propaganda and misinformation in authoritarian regimes (interestingly, it was published just after the second Trump administration began). Haymitch Abernathy, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mallark’s mentor in the original trilogy, recalls his Hunger Games from twenty-five years back: his attempts at stopping it, and the events that led to his family’s death and his lifelong struggle with alcohol abuse.
Katabasis by RF Kuang
After the critique of the publishing industry that was Yellowface, RF Kuang is back to writing fantasy and dark academia with her latest release, Katabasis. The book follows two magicians and doctoral students in Cambridge who must travel to hell to save their thesis advisor and get their Letter of Recommendation. Can it ever get any more academia than this?
Flesh: A Novel by David Szalay
This Booker Prize for Fiction 2025 winner is difficult to read in the beginning, but we promise you, it’s all worth it. You could say it’s a modern retelling of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 movie Barry Lyndon. Istavan is a fifteen-year-old Hungarian boy at the beginning of this novel, and we follow his rags-to-riches story as he takes one impulsive decision after another, ultimately leading to his downfall.
Audition by Katie Kitamura
Katie Kitamura's latest work is her most experimental one yet: she is an accomplished senior theatre actress preparing for her upcoming premier. He an assistant director young enough to be her son. One day, at a restauran , he reveals that he is her son. She can't believe that she even had a son in the first place.
Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness
Ocean Vuong’s second novel is about elder care, drawn from his experiences in the service industry. When we meet 19-year-old Hai, he’s on the brink of ending his drug-addicted life, when an elderly woman with dementia stops him. The story examines love, labor, and loneliness, offering a stark, humane portrait
of survival on society’s margins.