On October 6, the Giller Prize 2025 shortlist was announced. I am excited to highlight this year’s finalists. Let’s see which books made the list this year and why the jury chose them.
Giller Prize 2025 Finalists
We Love You, Bunny
Mona Awad
Scribner Canada
Why the jury chose this book:
“After Samantha Heather Mackey publishes her acclaimed debut novel based on her experiences in an elite graduate creative writing program, her former classmates plot to kidnap her and tell their side of the story, at any cost. What unfolds is a delightfully deranged tale of rivalries, rabbits, murder, desperation and madness. We Love You, Bunny is an unhinged waltz through the corridors of creative academia, blending satire and surreal magical chaos as artistic creations stumble through the night with axes and fall in love, frat parties end in murder, and creative jealousies fuel uncanny powers. As hilarious as it is inventive, Awad’s novel is refreshingly original, bold in imagination and daring in its execution, asking us to consider: What do we owe to art, and what, if anything, does art owe us in return?”
Goodreads, Publisher Website
The Tiger and the Cosmonaut
Eddy Boudel Tan
Viking Canada
Why the jury chose this book:
“Eddy Boudel Tan’s The Tiger and The Cosmonaut examines the complications inherent to immigration and assimilation within the contexts of sexuality and race in Canada’s rural and urban landscapes. We follow the brooding Casper Han’s desperate search for his father who has inexplicably disappeared in the middle of the night. Accompanied by his long-term boyfriend to the rural British Columbia town of his childhood, Casper’s homecoming forces him to reexamine his adult relationships with his siblings while reckoning with truths about his first love, all while being pushed back into the well of grief caused by the disappearance of his twin brother when they were children. While ruminating on the ways in which the kinetic forces of loss can ricochet through a family, this novel ponders what we owe our families of origin and the sometimes contradictory narratives we tell about ourselves, constructions that both hold us together and push us apart. A deeply introspective novel told as an unfolding mystery, this book blurs our vision in relation to the complicated nature of truth while also showing us how stories keep us sane.”
The Paris Express
Emma Donoghue
Harper Avenue
Why the jury chose this:
At 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 22, 1895, the Paris Express train departs from Granville to begin her journey towards the capital, driven by Guillaume Pellerinand and his stoker Victor Garnier, and pulling nearly a dozen cars filled with passengers, among them Mado, a disillusioned worker; Blonska, an impoverished spinster; seven-year-old Maurice Marland, travelling alone to meet his father; and Henry Tanner, an American painter. None are aware that Engine 721 is hurtling them towards disaster. Interwoven with meticulous historical detail and narrated by an ever-shifting ensemble of voices, this is a subtle, intimate story of human experience and a masterful display of technique infused with lyrical imagery and quiet reflection. As intricately crafted as a station master’s pocket watch, The Paris Express gains momentum and depth with each chapter, propelling us towards an inevitable, and deeply moving, conclusion. Donoghue’s novel unearths the smallest fears and deepest desires hidden inside ourselves and our fellow travellers, and shows us who we can become when faced with certain catastrophe.
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus
Emma Knight
Viking Canada
Why the jury chose this book:
“Part mystery, part coming-of-age, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is a luminous first novel by author Emma Knight. A meditation on identity, memory, and the many forms of motherhood, it follows Penelope “Pen” Winters, a Canadian student through her first year at the University of Edinburgh, as she tries to unravel a family secret. With charm, insight, and emotional precision, Knight deftly weaves themes of intergenerational legacy and self-discovery into a narrative both intimate and resonant.”
Pick a Colour
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Knopf Canada
Why the jury chose this book:
“In Pick a Colour, a former boxer-turned-manicurist spends an ostensibly ordinary summer day at her salon, quietly navigating the tension between her outward anonymity and her sharp, deeply intelligent, inner life. In this exquisite novel, intelligence isn’t inherited through education, status, or privilege–it’s earned. With an inimitable style that decentralizes the English language, crackling wit, and profound confidence, author Souvankham Thammavongsa challenges our biases and insists that we never look at a nail salon, or its workers, the same way again. A master of form and restraint, Thammavongsa once again affirms her place as one of the most vital literary voices of our time.”
About Giller Prize
Founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, the Giller Prize is Canada’s leading and most influential literary prize for fiction. The Giller Effect has been recognized industry-wide as one of the top drivers of book sales in Canada. The Giller Prize awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. The award is named in honour of Jack Rabinovitch’s wife, the late literary journalist, Doris Giller.
This year’s jury is composed of three outstanding Canadian authors: Dionne Irving (jury chair), Loghan Paylor, and Deepa Rajagopalan.
The longlist consisted of 14 titles of over the 100 submitted.
The winner of Giller Prize 2025 will be announced on November 17.
Have you read any of the books above or plan to? Tell me in the comments. I am looking forward to reading The Tiger and the Cosmonaut. If you want to read any of the books on this list, let me know. I would love to discuss together!
Check out last year’s shortlist here.
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