From a "richly atmospheric" novella to a "virtuosic" debut – this is the very best fiction of the year, as chosen by BBC journalists.
The Director to Flesh: The 25 best books of 2025
Rebecca Laurence and Lindsay Baker
Simon and Schuster, Scribner, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann
This part-fictionalised historical novel from the bestselling German-language novelist and playwright Kehlmann explores themes of art, power and complicity through the complex life of one of the great Austrian film-makers of the Weimer era, GW Pabst. Pabst flees the Nazi regime to LA, then fails to find success amid Hollywood's Golden Age (Kehlmann imagines that he is ghosted by Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks, actresses he discovered). Upon Pabst's return to his homeland, he is hired by Goebbels to make films for the Reich's Ministry of Propaganda. "The crux of The Director is whether it's weakness or necessity that makes Pabst compromise", writes the LRB. "A book about dreams and of dreams within dreams…", writes The New York Times, "The Director itself is a marvellous performance – not only supple, horrifying and mordantly droll, but fluidly translated and absolutely convincing." (RL)
Emotions run high on Goodreads. In fact, I tell every author navigating their first book launch to stay off it. They’re not going to listen to me, because who doesn’t want to know whether their manuscript – this precious thing they’ve toiled on in solitude for years – has found its readers? And because I’ve been there myself, I anticipate the spiral that follows. The elated high upon reading the first glowing review. The world-ending devastation of the first scathing review (or even the first lukewarm four-star review). The righteous indignation at the first three-star review. No one understands me. Are these people even literate?AmIevenliterate? It’s all too much; it doesn’t make you a better writer. Block the site and focus on your work.
Rebecca F Kuang: ‘Who has the right to tell a story? It’s the wrong question to ask’
Este artículo tiene más de dos años.
The bestselling author of Babel and the the Poppy War trilogy on her new satire of the publishing industry and why she won’t write in the same genre twice
On my radar: Rebecca F Kuang’s cultural highlights
This article is more than 2 years old
The bestselling author of Yellowface on prepping for Christopher Nolan films, a touring Mozart biopic and the swaggering young stars of Italian rock
Born in Guangzhou, China in 1996 and raised in Texas, author Rebecca F Kuangreceived an MPhil from Cambridge and an MSc from Oxford and is currently studying for a PhD in East Asian languages and literature at Yale. In 2018 she published the first of a trilogy of fantasy novels, The Poppy War, which is currently being adapted for television. This year, her publishing industry satire Yellowfacewas widely acclaimed. Her speculative fiction novel Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence, which topped the New York Times bestseller list last year and won a number of awards, is out in paperback on 28 September.
Rebecca F Kuang: ‘A Tale of Two Cities is deeply silly camp – I love it!’
This article is more than 2 months old
The US writer on being switched on to romance by Sally Rooney, the magic of David Mitchell and the joy of Jean-Paul Sartre
My favourite book growing up Brian Jacques’s Redwall (and all its sequels). All I wanted was to be a squirrel in the Mossflower Woods!
The books that changed me as a teenager I read China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station and The City & the City when I was in college. I had been falling out of love with fantasy – I felt too old for Redwall, and I thought I’d outgrown the genre – but Miéville’s work opened the door to the enormous world of adult fantasy literature that grappled with the problems I was now interested in.
The writers who changed my mind I had never been wildly interested in books that are primarily or even largely about romantic relationships, but in the past few years, works by Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto and Mieko Kawakami have changed my mind. They have opened my eyes to the potential in describing the subtle shifts in any interpersonal encounter, and I’m working out how to do that in my own writing now.
The authors I came back to It took me a while to understand Vladimir Nabokov’s brand of humour. I tried Pnin when I was in college and it just didn’t work. I gave it another try last month and I couldn’t stop giggling. It also took me a while to find the charm in Victor Hugo’s bloviating. In high school, I only read the bits of Les Misérables about the Friends of the ABC (I had a crush on Enjolras, just like everyone else.) Recently I read the unabridged edition, and I’m old enough now to enjoy every rabbit-hole sentence about Waterloo, argot and the Parisian sewer system.
The book I reread David Mitchell was my favourite author at college – I raved about The Bone Clocks to everyone I met. Cloud Atlas didn’t work so well for me, but I recently reread both, and this time I was stunned. Cloud Atlas (and its woefully underappreciated film adaptation) is so gorgeous and life-affirming. It was nice to find Mitchell’s writing is just as magical for me now as it was back then.
The book I could never read again I’ve just bought a copy of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends for my friend’s toddler’s birthday party. But who am I kidding? I still love those books!
The book I discovered later in life It took me a long time to get around to Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, which I only finished this summer despite my love of his other work. It is overwritten, melodramatic, deeply silly camp. I love it.
The book I am currently reading Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Time of the Hero, on the recommendation of my French translator. He lives in Spain and also does Spanish to French translations – we bonded over our love of Borges, and he insisted I read Vargas Llosa too. I’m also on an existentialism kick, so Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel and Albert Camus are high on my list. I’ve only now found out that the animated film character Marcel the Shell is a joke about Gabriel Marcel’s concept of the hard shell that closes us off to new possibilities.
Simon and Schuster, Scribner, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
