Kirkus Reviews has announced the finalists for the 12th annual Kirkus Prize in Fiction, Nonfiction and Young Readers’ Literature. The winners will be announced at an in-person ceremony at the Tribeca Rooftop in New York on Wednesday, October 8th. It also will be livestreamed on Kirkus's YouTube channel at 7:30pm ET.

The Kirkus Prize was created in 2014 to celebrate the discerning, thoughtful criticism that Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large since it was founded in 1933. For more information about Kirkus Reviews and the Kirkus Prize, please click here.
 

2025 Finalists

FICTION

• THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai (Hogarth)
• THE WILDERNESS by Angela Flournoy (Mariner Books)
• ISOLA by Allegra Goodman (Dial Press)
• A GUARDIAN AND A THIEF by Megha Majumdar ( Knopf)
• THE SLIP by Lucas Schaefer (Simon & Schuster)
• FLESH by David Szalay (Scribner)

 
NONFICTION

• KING OF KINGS: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation, by Scott Anderson (Doubleday)
• BALDWIN: A Love Story, by Nicholas Boggs (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• A MARRIAGE AT SEA: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck, by Sophie Elmhirst (Riverhead)
• AMERICA, AMÉRICA: A New History of the New World, by Greg Grandin (Penguin Press)
• BLACK IN BLUES: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, by Imani Perry
• MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME by Arundhati Roy (Scribner)

 
YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE
 
Picture Books

• ISLAND STORM by Brian Floca, illustrated by Sydney Smith (Holiday House/Neal Porter)
• EVERYBELLY by Thao Lam (Groundwood)

Middle Grade

• THE INCREDIBLY HUMAN HENSON BLAYZE by Derrick Barnes (Viking)
• JOHN THE SKELETON by Triinu Laan, illustrated by Marja-Liisa Plats, translated by Adam Cullen (Restless/Yonder)

Young Adult

• BUTTERFLY HEART by Moa Backe Åstot, trans. by Agnes Broomé (Levine Querido)
• DEATH IN THE JUNGLE: Murder, Betrayal and the Lost Dream of Jonestown, by Candace Fleming (Anne Schwartz/Random House)