The £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize, which celebrates fiction that 'breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form', has announced its 2025 shortlist. The judging panel, chaired by Amy Sackville and including authors Mark Haddon and Megan Nolan, selected six works described as 'slippery, genre-defying, vibrant, witty and profound'.
Sarah Hall is shortlisted for Helm, a novel about Britain's only named wind, which Mark Haddon called an 'interwoven braid of narratives, ranging from prehistoric times to the present day'. Charlie Porter's Nova Scotia House, exploring the impact of Aids, was praised by Neil Bartlett in a Guardian review as 'an exhilarating, risk-taking, life-affirming experiment'.
Yrsa Daley-Ward's The Catch, about two sisters whose dead mother reappears, was described by judge Simon Okotie as 'an extraordinary shape-shifting, genre-defying work of fiction' that blurs lines between popular, literary and science fiction. Colwill Brown, winner of this week's BBC national short story prize, features for We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, a debut about three young women in Doncaster that Catherine Taylor called 'boisterous and bleak, life-enhancing and life-denying'.
Ben Pester's The Expansion Project follows a father searching for his missing daughter in a business park, presented as a collage assembled by a future archivist. CD Rose's We Live Here Now examines the aftermath of disappearances at an art installation through a 'dizzying, encyclopaedic series of stories', according to Okotie.
The winner will be announced on 5 November at Foyles bookshop in London. Last year's prize went to Rachel Cusk for Parade. The award, now in its 13th year, is run in association with the New Statesman.
