It was a decent fiction year for me: not too many absolute standouts, but quite a few solid reads. Thanks to the International Booker, I read a number of translated works (into English) – it was a very mixed bag, with several favourites, a couple of mehs and a winner (Heart Lamp) that didn’t work for me at all. But reading more than half of the longlist was a very enriching experience, which I think is the point of the International Booker. I also read a few of the big commercial releases of the year, not something that I always do. It confirmed my experience that I tend to like these books, but they are rarely my firm favourites (although one of them is on this list).

I already talked about my absolute top reads in the Best of 2025 post: Door by Magda Szabo, The Book of Records by Madeline Thien, Audition by Katie Kitamura and Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, as well as Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club Series that I’m also putting in fiction for the lack of a better category. One thing I realised only when writing up this list: I complained in my SFF favourites post that I read very little science fiction in 2025 and most of what I read wasn’t great. I did, however, read several good literary SF works and three of them are among my favourites of the year. I could have put them (especially one) on the SFF list, but I like to keep that for more conventionally genre-appropriate stuff: not because I’m a fan of strict genre definitions, but having the potential readers in mind (and also because my fiction list would otherwise become too weak). So here we go:

The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. Deciding whether to include this one or The Book of Records in my top top books was tough*. Not that they are super similar, but they fill a similar niche – both are literary speculative fiction, both very well written and reflecting contemporary concerns in an unfamiliar setting. And incidentally, the titles are similar, too. That said, The Book of Records is perhaps best described as magical realism, while The Book of Guilt is a mix of alternative history and dystopia and reads a bit like a slow-paced literary thriller. It mostly follows three 13-year old boys in a strange orphanage, watched over by Mother Morning, Mother Day and Mother Night who record their misdeeds in The Book of Guilt. I mean, this should already give you and idea that all is not well. An unsettling and multifaceted, but very readable book. I don’t think you need to be a genre reader to enjoy this.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami. Another speculative fiction book, Under the Eye of the Big Bird takes the science fictional elements much further, but in a way that can be almost fable-like. It is difficult to explain the premise without spoiling it/revealing that I perhaps didn’t fully understand everything that happened. But we seem to be in far future where humanity is on the verge of extinction and survival has means significant changes to what ‘human’ means. The book is made up of interconnected stories that show humanity at different stages of their struggles and demands close reading to understand the implications of each snapshot. It is very high-concept and tackles what it means to be human – if you like this sort of thing, I think it’s fascinating and rewarding. But I believe that to fully enjoy this, it helps if you are either a seasoned (literary) SF reader or a literary fiction reader who is very open to weirdness and experimentation.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht. I read this one only because it was on the International Booker longlist (Under the Eye of the Big Bird was as well, but that one I may have read anyway) and was rather shocked that I liked it so much. It is a rather surreal story about a Swiss man who takes his ageing mother on a road trip to give away some of their family’s ill-gotten money. It is darkly humorous and occasionally tender and has fascinating historical allusions. It is a partly autobiographical work – Kracht comes from an important, wealthy Swiss family – and also addresses privilege and what to do about the sins of our fathers. From all the longlisted books I read, this was the most enjoyable for me (although I’d argue that Perfection is a more perfect book, that’s why it was on my Best of 2025 list). Highly recommended, but you need a high tolerance for the absurd.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the consciously serious, very literary, highly symbolic latest outing by Han Kang (which curiously was NOT on the International Booker longlist). I struggled with this choice as well, because I also read Kang’s The White Book last year that ultimately is, I think, my favourite from her. But I couldn’t have two Kangs on the list and in the end I went with We Do Not Part, as it was published last year and it’s also a more ambitious work. On the surface, it is about a woman who travels from Seoul to Jeju Island to take care of the pet bird of a friend who’s in the hospital. But as always with Kang, it’s really about something else – mostly Korea’s violent history in this case, similarly to Human Acts. The symbolism didn’t always work for me, but I loved the descriptions of snow and cold on Jeju and piecing together the historic clues to understand the events of the past. I admire Kang for asking some of the toughest questions about humanity and interrogating history in ways not many are capable of.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. If I am entirely honest, I expected to like this even more than I did**, as it covers two of my particular interests – ancient Mesopotamia and the Yazidi culture. I also like it when books (especially longer ones) follow different timelines and characters, as I can get impatient with linear narratives unless they are absolutely riveting. In There Are Rivers in the Sky we get a Victorian Assyriologist, a young Yazidi girl in recent past and a female scientist in contemporary London. And most importantly for me, Ashurbanipal himself makes an appearance! All of them are connected through water, the rivers of the title. As with Kang, I applaud the ambition and despite soma flaws (a certain clunkiness and occasional over-writing), it is a fascinating book. If you are a lover of historical fiction and in particular stories where history itself is a character, I am pretty sure you’d enjoy this.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Out of the more ‘commercial’ literary books I read in 2025, Wild Dark Shore was my favourite. It is a literary thriller taking place on a remote island close to Antarctica that houses the world’s last seed bank. The bank is looked after by a father with three kids, when a strange woman washes ashore. Everyone is hiding something and unravelling that provides the main plot engine, while the issues of grief, connection, climate change and loss of biodiversity are also examined. It is done well, but the real star is the island itself: a cold, windy place of harsh beauty. The book can occasionally be a bit predictable, but the tension is maintained throughout and overall, it balances genre conventions with more complex elements remarkably well. If you don’t like your literary fiction to be too literary and simply want a good story, I would also recommend Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere and Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent. I would not say that these are masterpieces for the ages, but I enjoyed both – and can also recommend the audiobooks.

As an honourable mention, I wanted to note David Szalay’s Flesh. It’s not quite a favourite, as I spent large parts of the novel extremely frustrated, but it was an interesting reading experience. If you are like me and mostly read fiction written by women, it provides a fascinating counter point. I believe Szalay achieved exactly what he set out to achieve with this book – whether you like it is an entirely different question.

I know that the timing of my best of lists is ridiculous, but I have been away and half-sick and I still want to record the favourites for my own sake, even if nobody else cares. But if you do, tell me about your 2025 fiction favourites!

*What tipped the scales was the fact that I read The Book of Guilt in the end of the year and was afraid of recency bias. But no, I was right, it is a great book.

**I really had unreasonably high expectations.