{"id":458429,"date":"2025-09-28T17:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/458429\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:52:10","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-the-2025-booker-prize-bringing-posh-bingo-to-the-booktok-generation-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/458429\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on the 2025 Booker prize: bringing posh bingo to the BookTok generation | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

With its reputation for stuffiness and elitism, the Booker prize may seem unsuited to the age of social media. Back in the 1980s, when writers\u2019 spats and affairs made headlines, the winning ceremony was televised by the BBC<\/a>. It was the book world\u2019s Oscars. Today, the idea of tuning in to watch the dinner-suited literati tuck into supper in London\u2019s oak-panelled Guildhall seems preposterous. But the UK\u2019s most prestigious literary prize still needs to reach as wide an\u00a0audience as possible. How do you sell \u201cposh bingo\u201d<\/a>,\u00a0as Julian Barnes memorably dubbed it, to the BookTok<\/a> generation?<\/p>\n

It is no longer enough to tell people what they should be reading. Readers expect to be part of the conversation \u2013 to be in the bingo hall. This year\u2019s shortlist was announced live by the chair and former Booker prizewinner Roddy Doyle at an event at London\u2019s Southbank Centre, with behind-the-scenes chat from the panel<\/a>. The event was also livestreamed.<\/p>\n

However, readers are not going to be allowed into the\u00a0judging room anytime soon. \u201cMichael Frayn: Curiously dull\u201d; \u201cMelvyn Bragg: To name only one defect, how grossly over-written,\u201d the formidable Rebecca West, one of the first judges, wrote in her memos. There\u2019s a reason the meetings are confidential. But West would surely have approved of this year\u2019s rich and remarkably varied shortlist<\/a>, which includes The\u00a0Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny<\/a> by the former Booker winner Kiran\u00a0Desai, Flesh<\/a> by David Szalay, The Land in Winter<\/a> by Andrew Miller (both previous shortlistees), The Rest of Our Lives<\/a> by Ben\u00a0Markovits, Flashlight<\/a> by Susan\u00a0Choi and Audition<\/a> by Katie Kitamura. There are no debuts.<\/p>\n

But first-time writers will be well served by a new prize<\/a> in memory of the double-Booker-winning Wolf Hall novelist Hilary Mantel. And, in a sure sign of a shifting cultural landscape, another award<\/a> was also launched last week to recognise Bookstagram favourites, with titles submitted and judged by members of the online books community. Who needs expert judges in the era of bookfluencers? There is room for both. Far from abandoning the Booker, online readers have gravitated towards the\u00a0prize as a focus for discussion through its rapidly growing TikTok following and lively digital\u00a0book club.<\/p>\n

Amid dismaying reports<\/a> of a decline in reading for pleasure (and literacy), a crisis in literary festivals<\/a> and fears of the novel\u2019s dwindling status, this is all cause for celebration. The Booker is still a cultural institution to be reckoned with, not just in Britain but globally. Following recent crowd-pleasers such as Douglas Stuart\u2019s Shuggie Bain<\/a> and last year\u2019s Orbital<\/a> by Samantha Harvey (the fastest-selling winner in Booker history), the prize has finally found a path between pomposity and popularity.<\/p>\n

With such a strong shortlist, the 2025 winner promises to be another hit. If Orbital was also one\u00a0of\u00a0the shortest winners ever, this year should quell anxieties about vanishing attention spans with one of the titles weighing in at a hefty 700\u00a0pages. As\u00a0stories of how to live with \u2013 and love \u2013 other people, all six novels are \u201cbrilliantly human\u201d<\/a>, as Doyle put it, a reminder of the threat to creativity from AI. Reading might be a solitary pursuit, but the\u00a0shared experience of a novel can bring us together in a profoundly intimate way. Prizes provide a meeting place. At a time of so much\u00a0division, we can\u00a0take comfort in what another\u00a0of this year\u2019s judges, Ay\u00f2b\u00e1mi Ad\u00e9b\u00e1y\u00f2, called \u201cthe communality of fiction\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With its reputation for stuffiness and elitism, the Booker prize may seem unsuited to the age of social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-458429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115283200848321686","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}