Max Porter

48kg. by Batool Abu Akleen

‘My book of the year is 48kg., by Batool Abu Akleen, translated from Arabic by the poet, with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti & Yasmin Zaher, published by Tenement Press in Bristol.

It is the debut collection by a twenty-year-old writer from Gaza, whose diaries also form a part of Comma Press’s astonishing, devastating collection Voices of Resistance.

Each of the forty-eight poems in the collection equates to a kilogram of the poet’s bodyweight, as she contemplates the genocide against her people, the death and starvation around her and the perilousness of her own existence. It is a brutal, brilliant, surprising collection full of innovation, wisdom and tenderness. Like much of the poetry coming out of Palestine during this ongoing atrocity, this collection feels like a miracle of resilience, defiance and dignity.’

Sebastian Barry

The Bureau by Eoin McNamee

‘I read almost nothing all year because I was working, but I did read, and was both chilled and overwhelmed by, Eoin McNamee’s The Bureau. Written in his ever-formidable style, it reaches beyond itself and is a singular, piercing novel about ruined souls and toxic hearts.’

John Banville

Escape from the Anthill by Hubert Butler

‘My book of the year is a bit of a cheat, since it was first published in 1985, but I have used the fortieth-anniversary edition of Escape from the Anthill (Lilliput Press) as an excuse to celebrate Hubert Butler, one of the finest essayists in the English language. Butler (1900–1991) was born County Kilkenny and lived there for most of his life, though he travelled widely in his twenties, so that his subjects range from “Anglo-Irish Twilight” to “Mr Pfeffer of Sarajevo”. Elegant, wise, witty and always authentic, these essays will be a revelation for those new to Butler’s work, and a happy reunion for old hands.’

Ben Markovits

Ellmann’s Joyce by Zachary Leader

‘One of my favourite books of the year was Zachary Leader’s Ellmann’s Joyce (Harvard Press). It’s not just a story of Ellmann’s life, but an account of the most notable thing he did in it, which was to write a famous biography of Joyce. Fiction sometimes neglects the importance of work to our characters’ lives, because it’s hard to make it narratively interesting. But we spend half our lives at work and at least that much thinking about it. Leader’s biography gives a wonderfully layered picture of his subject.’

Richard Scott

Bone Horn by Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain

‘Bone Horn is such a surprising and inventive book. What begins as darkly funny and absurdist crime fiction – a private investigator is tasked with determining whether Alice B. Toklas had an actual horn – soon spirals into a moving yet fast-paced investigation into grief, queer desire, Modernism, archives, poetry, academia, queer ancestry and, of course, Gertrude Stein herself. And Bussey-Chamberlain’s ability to sew lines of poetry into the crime drama creates such a compelling richness. It’s an unforgettable piece of writing.’

Moira Buffini

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

‘One of the books I thoroughly enjoyed this year is The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler. It’s speculative fiction at its best, with a dark vision of our near future and a mind-blowing exploration of different intelligences. Dr Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist, is employed to investigate a species of highly advanced cephalopods, who are hostile to humanity. She sets herself the task of trying to understand their language and finds herself increasingly reliant on the artificial intelligence of her colleague, a uniquely sophisticated android. Meanwhile, across the globe, a hacker is trying to sabotage her project – while a super trawler, crewed by people enslaved by AI, threatens to destroy the nature reserve where she is working, one of the last natural habitats on Earth. This is a dangerous world run by corporations and the vision could be very bleak. But Nayler’s characters are engaging and the book is compellingly written. It pulls off the trick of presenting the very real dangers that face us, whilst somehow managing to be hopeful. I loved it.’

Lucy Caldwell

How to End a Story by Helen Garner

‘I loved Ella Frears’s Goodlord, which – trust me on this – is far more than a book-length poem about renting has any right to be, wild and ferocious and sexy and funny. Lamorna Ash’s Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever is serious, luminous and profound, an exploration of what it might mean to have Christian faith in the twenty-first century as a bisexual person, as a feminist, that’s animated by an intuitive intelligence. Melissa Febos’s The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex is similarly sharp and contemporary and profound; and it is always the greatest of invigorating pleasures spending time with Anne Enright, always so alert, so attuned, so alive, whose collected essays were published as Attention. I’ve long been a fan of Ben Markovits – my favourites of his books are A Weekend in New York and Christmas in Austin – so it was wonderful to see The Rest of Our Lives recognised by the Booker Prize judges this year, though David Szalay’s Flesh was I thought a worthy winner (that opening chapter! that dialogue! those hundreds of ‘Oks’ that say so much!). Another novel I loved this year was Gráinne O’Hare’s debut, Thirst Trap – it’s a cracking read, a fresh and vivid and very welcome new version of Belfast.

My overall Book of the Year, though, is Helen Garner’s collected diaries, published as How to End a Story. I read them obsessively, compulsively, cover to cover like a psychological thriller – this testament to what it means for a woman to write, to make art, not just amidst but from the quotidian, the domestic, the most intimate chambers of experience. From longing, and rage, and abjection, and shame, and defiance, Garner has forged a true magnum opus. Like the diaries of Virginia Woolf, or the journals of Katherine Mansfield or of Sylvia Plath, these are essential reading, not just, but perhaps especially, for any woman trying to write or to make art. How to End a Story is brilliantly – sharply, slyly, often sardonically – of its place and time, but like all great works of art it will speak to all time.’

Jeffrey Boakye

The Quiet Ear by Raymond Antrobus

‘The Quiet Ear by the poet, educator and writer Raymond Antrobus is a book that not only turned corners in my thinking, but also invited me to consider perspectives that I had never fully considered before. Shaped as a memoir detailing his life and experiences from childhood into the present, this is a beautifully written, poignant and honest book that weaves themes of identity and lived experience with the most skilful of touches. Antrobus explores the intersections of race, nationality, class, gender, deaf/Deafness and more, whilst crafting frequent tributes to an array of figures who have had an impact on his life. More than a memoir, this is a book that changes how you move through the world. Highly recommended.’

Lally MacBeth

Little Ruins by Manni Coe

‘Following on from Manni’s last book, brother. do. you. love. me., Little Ruins traces the footsteps of Manni, Jack and Reuben to the wilds of the Spanish countryside, where they have made a home in The Corner. It is a beautiful telling of love, loss and what makes a home. This is a book that finds you at the right moment; I read it in two sittings and found it so deeply consoling and moving. It left me dreaming of the Spanish sun and of deep relationships and what it means to love and be loved.’

Sarah Hall

Pigeonholed by Gary Younge

‘I love a lean powerful booklet – the literary equivalent of a suitcase bomb – whether it’s a manifesto, like Alasdair Gray’s Why Scots Should Rule Scotland, or a feminist provocation like Sarah Perry’s Essex Girls. By far the most dynamic and incisive treatise I’ve read recently is Gary Younge’s Pigeonholed. In it he explores the burden of representation for people from under-represented groups; those who are, as Toni Morrison noted, politicised before they get out of the gate. He deftly and refractively analyses the society from which expectations and prejudices come. It’s no mean feat to distill issues of racial bias, history, culture and personal experience with such efficiency, humour and insight. Younge moves swiftly and seismically across only forty pages, employing all his skill as one of Britain’s leading political writers, enacting the creative freedom and inclusive understanding central to his proposition. Pigeonholed is perfectly composed and potently charged, pocket-sized, and a fantastic gift for any reader.’

Francis Spufford

The Island: W. H. Auden and the Last of Englishness by Nicholas Jenkins

‘Nicholas Jenkins’ The Island: W. H. Auden and the Last of Englishness (Faber) was technically a 2024 book, and the paperback won’t be out till February 2026, but I’m going to recommend it anyway, because I read it this year, as the best and most beautifully written piece of extended literary history I’ve come across in ages. One of those rare books that gets you all the way inside the mind and imagination and creative processes of a poet, at one crucial junction point in their life: in this case, inside the mind of the young Auden, as the thirty-one extraordinary poems of his 1936 collection Look, Stranger prove to be, not the hopeful embrace of his Depression-era England that he had planned, but a kind of unknowing goodbye to it. Writing well about poetry depends on reading it well, and Nicholas Jenkins reads Auden superlatively.’

Jodie Harsh

Gunk by Saba Sams

‘I loved Gunk – a quiet book set in noisy places. The story follows Jules and her friend Nim as they navigate an unplanned pregnancy and an awful boyfriend. Much of the book takes place on the noisy Brighton seafront and its sweaty underground nightclub, Gunk. Flashbacks from last night and past lives litter the tale, and you can smell this world on the page – babies in arms, bubblegum vapes on the dance floor, the dirty sea on a Christmas morning swim. It was compelling and absolutely believable.’

Kieran Larwood

Rune by Carlos Sanchez

‘My standout books of 2025 have been the Rune series by Carlos Sanchez, published by Flying Eye Books. The artwork is so detailed and engaging, the use of colour is completely original and the story is captivating. I can imagine them hooking in lots of young readers and creating lifelong graphic novel fans!’

Emma Warren

Kitchen Hymns by Pádraig Ó Tuama

‘I wasn’t looking for this book when I found it. Instead, I was looking for a collection by John Hewitt, whose poems about unstable identities bridged the Glens of Antrim and Coventry. Scanning the shelves whilst visiting No Alibis in Belfast, I continued past my successful stop at H and landed on O.

Almost immediately I knew I’d found the collection I needed. Ó Tuama is well known for selecting other people’s poems and presenting them to listeners of the On Being podcast or through his successful Poetry Unbound collections. I didn’t even think I liked poetry collections, but ones that include Zaffar Kunial and Ada Limón? Yes please.

The undercurrents of his own poems, though, hit me strange and hard. I felt kinship with at least some of the cultural material sitting around and underneath the lines, and I immediately loved the shapes and tones he built with the bricks and bones of faith, separation and connection. “I believe I’m in the room next to belief . . . I like the smell of incense” or a poem which praises a grandmother who “knew a portion was enough”. I’ve used both lines to explain myself to others and have widely quoted a line from another of these remarkable poems: “there is no such thing as the past / just stories of the past”.

I could go on – the central series of poems, “In a Garden by a Gate”, in which he has Jesus and Persephone, lost and found together in Hell’s exit, pushing each other’s buttons in ways that made me respond like a cartoon character. She didn’t! He did! Or the “hellpsalms” which sit as a reverse negative in between. Or the baby birds and dead friends and (to use his phrase) “punked-up” scriptural references. In short, there’s a lot going on. And I love it.’