Penguin Random House India is delighted to announce that The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, the long-awaited novel by Booker Prize–winning author Kiran Desai, has been longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize for Fiction. The prestigious longlist of 13 titles was unveiled today by the Booker Prize Foundation.
Set to be published in India under Penguin’s Hamish Hamilton imprint in September 2025, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is Desai’s first novel since her beloved bestseller The Inheritance of Loss, which earned her the Booker Prize in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
An epic love story following two Indians navigating lives between the United States and India, the novel explores themes of tradition, displacement, family bonds, race, class, and identity. At 667 pages, it is the longest book on this year’s longlist.
This is another milestone nomination for a Penguin title at the Booker Prize. Previously, we have secured wins with The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997), The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (2006) and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (2022).
Manasi Subramaniam, Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President of the imprints Hamish Hamilton, Allen Lane, Viking, Penguin and Penguin Classics at PRH India, says, ‘To see The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize nineteen years after Kiran Desai won for The Inheritance of Loss is deeply meaningful. This novel dazzles with its ambition: intimate in its details, epic in its reach. It moves with clarity, wit and deep emotional intelligence through questions of class, migration and love. We are thrilled to publish it and proud to bring it home.’
Milee Ashwarya, Publisher and Senior VP, Adult Publishing Group, PRH India, says, ‘It is a moment of immense pride and joy for us at Penguin Random House India to be the publishers of Kiran Desai’s extraordinary new novel. As an Indian publishing house, it is both an honour and a celebration of storytelling to be home to writers whose works shape the global literary conversation. We are deeply committed to championing diverse voices and transformative stories, and we take that role very seriously.‘
The 2025 longlist features authors from nine nationalities across four continents and was selected from 153 submissions, making it the most globally diverse list in a decade. According to judges’ chair Roddy Doyle, the chosen titles are “alive with great characters and narrative surprises” and “examine identity, individual or national”.
The shortlist of six will be announced on 23 September 2025, with the winner revealed at the ceremony in London on 10 November 2025.
About the author:
Kiran Desai is the bestselling author of two novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Born in India, she came to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City.
