The 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist has been announced — 16 genre-spanning novels, including two of interest to sff readers.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time-travel.

Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury)

Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.

But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility’s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour…

The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

The complete fiction longlist follows the jump. The Women’s Prize For Non Fiction longlist is also available at the link.

The full list in alphabetical order by author surname is:

Good Girl by Aria Aber (published by Bloomsbury)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (published by Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, Hachette)

Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches (published by Scotland Street Press)

Amma by Saraid de Silva (published by Weatherglass Books)

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings (published by Holland House Books)

All Fours by Miranda July (published by Canongate Books)

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (published by Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury)

The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins)

Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (published by Scribner, Simon & Schuster)

A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike (published by Fig Tree, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

Birding by Rose Ruane (published by Corsair, Little, Brown Book Group, Hachette)

The Artist by Lucy Steeds (published by John Murray, John Murray Press, Hachette)

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House)

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette)

[Based on a press release.]