From Aw to Zusak: Stuart Kelly on the year ahead in books

Authors with new books out in 2025 include (clockwise from top left) Robert Macfarlane, Eimear McBride, Emma Donoghue, Kirsty Logan, Ewan Morrison and Geoff Dyer | Contributed

Out of curiosity, albeit of a somewhat morbid hue, I decided to ask ChatGPT what the best books of 2025 were. After courteously upbraiding me for posing a question it couldn’t give an answer since it concerned something which had not yet happened or been decided, it offered four titles that were already getting positive feedback.

To my surprise, I actually had one on my shelf: Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author (about an AI after the extinction of humanity). I was intending to read it, since I admired the author’s previous novel Lagoon, and judging by the marketing, this seems to be targeting a different audience to her earlier “Binti” Trilogy. The algorithm also offered Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil, Luminous by Silvia Park and King of Ashes by SA Cosby. Luminous is also speculative fiction, King of Ashes is “epic crime” and Black Salt Queen is fantasy. All, in other words, genre; and all by writers of colour (SA Cosby is male).

A friend ran a more sophisticated version of a broadly similar query. The only book the lists had in common was SA Cosby; two this time were very clearly “literary”, those being the new Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Dream Count, and the new book, We Do Not Part, by Han Kang – winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize. As for the rest – we have Suzanne Collins of Hunger Games fame with a Hunger Games novel, the fantasy writer Rebecca Yarros, YA romantasy with The Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli, Sangu Mandanna (also witches), a psychological thriller called The Last Room on the Left by Leah Konen and yet more romantasy with Thea Guanzon (technically published in 2024).

This clearly tells us something; but what? Well, it tells us about publishing, not literature, for starters. The AI is very good and very quick at sifting and tallying, rather less good at discerning.

I could tell you about the following books by “literary” authors coming out next year – Tash Aw’s The South, Ocean Vuong’s The Emperor of Gladness, Emma Donoghue’s The Paris Express – and if you’ve read their previous work you may or may not be excited by that prospect. One book which is sure to be described as sure to be something is Markus Zusak’s non-fiction Three Wild Dogs and the Truth (he has form in canine books; the Underdog trilogy was at the start of his career). But he is famous for The Book Thief, his saccharine Holocaust story which I loathed; so I am massively disinclined to give a fig about the mutt-lit. (Oddly, Louis de Bernières followed Captain Corelli’s Mandolin with the eminently forgettable Red Dog. My affection for Virginia Woolf’s Flush and Andrew O’Hagan’s Maf the Dog shows I am not wholly anti-dog).

It is telling to go through catalogue and see what snags. There will be the usual Belisha beacons like “perfect for fans of Richard Osman”. My eyes glazed when in quick succession there was a “dark, funny and moving story… set against the backdrop of the Moors murders”, a “dark comedy novel about addiction”, “a dark satirical parable” about high school disappearances and a “dysfunctional family who come together in a hilarious way in the wake of their father’s sudden death”. Add into that celebrity novels and it edges out of reality and into parody: the clock is ticking for Gregg Wallace’s cosy crime with a ghost puppy sidekick.

What the AI does reveal is that much of the commercial stock is not as far from the literary as one might think. Rachel Driscoll’s Nephthys, Karen Russell’s The Antidote, Roadkill by South Korean author Amil, Rickey Fayne’s The Devil Three Times, Emilia Hart’s The Sirens, Francesca Simon’s novel for adults, Salka, Nick Newman’s gothic sibling story The Garden, Georgia Leighton’s Spellbound. Virginia Feito’s Victorian Psycho (which probably intrigues me most) – there is ample un-realism afoot. I sometimes wonder if reality isn’t quite ghastly enough. Scotland is not exempt: new and debut by Heather Parry (Carrion Crow), Richard Strachan (The Unrecovered), Gabrielle Griffiths (Greater Sins) and Kirsty Logan (No & Other Love Stories, a rather presumptuous curtsy at Ali Smith’s titling) all seem to be kith.

Other Scottish work includes Rachel Seiffert’s Once the Deed is Done, her first novel in eight years, and Ewan Morrison’s For Emma. I have no qualms enthusing about it – a novel that deals achingly with grief, technology and terror – since I’ve read it, but as he is a friend I should add that Iain Sinclair, Lionel Shriver and Irvine Welsh concur. Likewise, I have worked with Robert Macfarlane, and read all his backlist, so am cautiously optimistic about Is A River Alive?

For the rest I can only go by past form and gut feelings, which gives me two up on the robots. RF Kuang’s Katabasis is a move back from her more satirical work to dark academia, and Xiaolu Guo’s Call Me Ishmaelle looks typically irreverent. Rejection by Tulathimutti looks promising, as any author described as “a pervert, a madman and a stone-cold genius ought to be”, as does Christopher Bollen’s Havoc (it is compared to Shirley Jackson: a tenth as good as her would be genius). Similarly Geoff Dyer, Maggie Nelson, Laurent Binet, Eimear McBride would all be on my wish-list.

Two final flags: the excellent Frances Wilson takes on Muriel Spark, and I can almost forgive the title being Electric Spark. And though few nowadays rate her, I cannot wait for Francesca Wade’s Gertude Stein. Oh, and George RR Martin probably won’t release Winds of Winter.