The Booker Prize Longlist Book Club

Join us to discuss this 2025 Longlister for the Booker Prize.

A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp.

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. Their encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István barely understands, and his life soon spirals out of control.

Spare and penetrating, Flesh asks profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

Join us to discuss this 2025 Longlister for the Booker Prize.

A mesmerising portrait of a young man confined by his class and the ghosts of his family’s past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment.

Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyath down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream.

When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Haunting and timeless, this is the story of a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.

Join us to discuss this 2025 Longlister for the Booker Prize.

Ledia Xhoga’s ruminative debut novel interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation.

In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.

As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardising the nameless narrator’s marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not.

Join us to discuss this 2025 Longlister for the Booker Prize.

An unforgettable road trip of a novel about getting older, and the challenges of long-term marriage.

What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home?

When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned 18. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.

He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife.

So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.

Pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving, The Rest of Our Lives is a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us.