August 27, 2025, 10:00am

Today, Kirkus Reviews announced the 18 finalists for the 2025 Kirkus Prize, in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, and Young Readers’ Literature. Finalists are chosen from the pool of writers whose work has been awarded a coveted Kirkus star in the eligibility year (only about 10% of books reviewed by Kirkus can boast one, according to the organization), and the winner in each category will receive $50,000.

“In a time of shortened attention spans and endless news feeds, books have the unique power to slow us down, to help us to think deeply and imagine freely,” said Kirkus Reviews editor-in-chief Tom Beer, in a statement. “This year’s finalists for the Kirkus Prize promise readers these and other riches; they’re exceptional works to be studied and savored for years to come.”

Here are the finalists:

FICTION:

Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth)

Angela Flournoy, The Wilderness (Mariner Books)

Allegra Goodman, Isola (Dial Press)

Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief ( Knopf)

Lucas Schaefer, The Slip (Simon & Schuster)

David Szalay, Flesh (Scribner)

*

NONFICTION:

Scott Anderson, King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation (Doubleday)

Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Sophie Elmhirst, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck (Riverhead)

Greg Grandin, America, América: A New History of the New World (Penguin Press)

Imani Perry, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People (Ecco/HarperCollins)

Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me (Scribner)

*

YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:

Picture Books
Brian Floca, Island Storm, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Holiday House/Neal Porter)

Thao Lam, Everybelly (Groundwood)

Middle Grade
Derrick Barnes, The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze (Viking)

Triinu Laan, John the Skeleton, illustrated by Marja-Liisa Plats, tr. Adam Cullen (Restless/Yonder)

Young Adult
Moa Backe Åstot, Butterfly Heart, tr. Agnes Broomé (Levine Querido)

Candace Fleming, Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal and the Lost Dream of Jonestown (Anne Schwartz/Random House)

*

The winners in each category will be announced at a ceremony on October 8, 2025.