Connection and identity illuminate book prize shortlist
Nine captivating books have been shortlisted for UK's longest-running literary prize.
The James Tait Black Awards shortlists for 2025 have been announced.
The 2025 James Tait Black Prize shortlist features nine compelling works of fiction and biography showcasing the best and breadth of contemporary writing this past year.
Four bold novels by authors from the UK, US, Netherlands and Palestine consider themes of social connection, identity and cultural legacy, while five biographies recall lives lived with daring and distinction from history and the recent past, all having resonated with readers around the world.
The awards – which have been presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919 – are the only major British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students.
The shortlisted authors and novels on the 2025 James Tait Black Awards Fiction shortlist.
Stories for our time
The fiction shortlist features emotionally resonant novels that delve into questions of selfhood, memory and human connection.
In The Coin, Yasmin Zaher offers a powerful debut that dissects the fractured identity of a Palestinian woman living between two cultures and histories while making a life for herself in New York City.
Phillip B. Williams' Ours fuses historical fiction with the supernatural, creating an imagined world where a group of former slaves build a society steeped in resistance, myth and healing.
Lucas Rijneveld’s My Heavenly Favourite, translated by Michele Hutchison, charts a rural veterinarian’s obsession with a young girl in an unflinching dissection of taboos and social norms.
Mark Bowles’ All My Precious Madness charts a man’s descent into anger and obsession. The novel plays with the limits of reality and perception, in a darkly comic portrait of a mind in conflict.
The fiction shortlist brings together bold and provocative novels by authors from the UK, US, the Netherlands and Palestine, and provides a snapshot of the thrilling variety of global contemporary literature right now.
Dr Benjamin Bateman & Dr Hannah Boast
Fiction Judging Panel
Bold lives reimagined
The 2025 Biography shortlist brings together five compelling works that showcase lives shaped by revolution, resilience and reimagined identities.
Michael Hughes’s Feliks Volkhovskii: A Revolutionary Life, shines light on a forgotten figure of Russian politics, tracing his journey from the rise of nihilism to the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
In Vagabond Princess, Ruby Lal brings to life the extraordinary travels of 16th-century Mughal princess Gulbadan Begum, painting a vivid portrait of a woman defying the constraints of her time.
Lamia Ziadé’s My Great Arab Melancholy, translated by Emma Ramadan, is a richly illustrated memoir intertwining the personal with the political in celebration of the Arab world's recent past.
Hanif Kureishi’s Shattered is a candid account of how to rebuild a life following devastating injury. Kureishi reflects on his own experience and the human spirit's capacity to adapt and endure.
Nicholas Jenkins’s The Island: War and Belonging in Auden’s England offers a new portrait of the poet’s life and work, exploring how Auden's shifting beliefs shaped his vision of Englishness.
The shortlisted writers and books on the 2025 James Tait Black Awards Biography shortlist.
Winning titles
The shortlisted titles will now be considered by a panel of students and scholars to decide the winners, both of which will be announced by the University at the end of May.
An event celebrating the shortlisted books will be held on Friday 30 May, hosted by fiction judges Dr Benjamin Bateman and Dr Hannah Boast and biography judges Dr Désha Osborne and Dr Simon Cooke. The reception will also feature a conversation with last year’s Biography winner, Ian Penman, talking about both his award-winning book - Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors – and his new title, Erik Satie Three Piece Suite.
In the eclectic shortlist of biography, history and memoir, each offers stories of lives lived without fear and united by the wisdom in knowing that entering the lives of others – however remote from our own – helps us discover something deeper about ourselves and what connects us.
Dr Désha Osborne & Dr Simon Cooke
Biography Judging Panel
An enduring legacy
The annual Prizes are awarded for the best work of fiction and biography written in or translated into English published in the previous 12 months. They are the UK’s longest-running literary awards.
They began in the early 20th century after Janet Tait Black made provision in her will for the creation of two book prizes to be awarded annually in memory of her husband, James Tait Black.
Since then, the list of winning authors forms a who’s who of literary distinction, featuring Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Muriel Spark and Zadie Smith.
Equally stellar names appear on the list of biography winners, including Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, Quentin Bell, John Buchan, Richard Ellmann, Hermione Lee and Lytton Strachey.
The University also offers a free online course to give readers the chance to engage with judges and other readers about the shortlisted fiction books as well as classics of English and Scottish fiction.
The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – called ‘How to Read a Novel' draws on the James Tait Black fiction shortlist and has attracted more than 64,000 participants since it launched in 2017.
