Andrew Miller is the bookies’ favorite to win the 2025 Booker Prize | Booker Prize

Andrew Miller is the bookies’ favorite to win the 2025 Booker Prize, which will be announced on Monday evening in London.

The English author beats William Hill’s odds at 6/4 for The Land in Winter, a novel set in 1960s England about two marriages struggling under the weight of postwar class divisions, professional disintegration and emotional estrangement. Miller was previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001 for his novel “Oxygen.”

Kiran Desai is Miller’s closest 2/1 rival in The Unity of Sonia and Sunny, the Indian author’s first novel in nearly two decades. The nearly 700-page book follows the lives of two young Indians as they navigate life in the United States at the turn of the millennium. It is Desai’s third novel and her first since The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006. If she wins again, Desai will become the fifth writer to win the prize twice, joining JM Coetzee, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

Hungarian-British writer David Szalay has also seen a late rise in betting, with Flesh shortened to 9/4 from 4/1 in recent days. The novel takes place between Hungary and London, and charts the story of one man from rags to riches over several decades.

The rest of the shortlist includes Susan Choi’s Flashlight, a sprawling family saga; Katie Kitamura’s Psychological Study Audition; and Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives, a middle-aged road trip novel.

“This year’s Booker Prize remains an open race ahead of Monday’s announcement, with Andrew Miller edging out Kiran Desai as the favorite at 6/4,” William Hill spokesman Lee Phelps said. “The 2006 winner Desai is just behind Miller’s Winterland; we’re 2/1 likely to take home another Booker Prize almost 20 years after her first scoop with Inheritance of Loss. This year’s competition looks remarkably close, with little to separate the six contenders.”

Established in 1969, the Booker Prize is awarded annually to the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner receives £50,000, and the award is known for boosting the international profile and sales of its recipients.

Previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Ian McEwan and, most recently, Samantha Harvey, who received the award in 2024 for her novel Orbital about the space station.

A total of 153 novels were submitted for this year’s award, and it was judged by a panel chaired by Irish writer Roddy Doyle and including actress Sarah Jessica Parker, alongside writers Chris Power, Ayobami Adepaye and Kelly Reed.