The Best Adventure Novels: The 2025 Wilbur Smith Prize, recommended by Nathan Gray
Adventure means something different for everyone, says Nathan Gray, former fighter pilot and a judge for this year's Wilbur Smith Prize for Adventure Writing. He talks us through the brilliant books that made the 2025 shortlist, and the journeys they took him on.
SCIENCE BOOKS Our Brains, Our Selves by Masud Husain
🏆 JUST ANNOUNCED: Winner of the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize
“It’s a very empathetic book, told in a wonderful way”—Sandra Knapp, prize judge
BIOGRAPHY Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff 🏆 Winner 2011 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography
“To restore Cleopatra is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and the hoary propaganda”—Stacy Schiff, biographer
NONFICTION BOOKS A History of the Bible by John Barton
“A History of the Bible is another example of global history. It is also a summation of a lifetime’s work and knowledge…It’s a fascinating work”—Richard Evans, historian
NEW BOOKS/FANTASY Katabasis by RF Kuang
“This is the perfect beach read for fans of Five Books, set at Cambridge University and full of jokes about the intellectual life. It’s 500+ pages, but I read it in two days (at home, as it’s too cold for the beach by now)”—Sophie Roell, editor, Five Books
CRIME NOVELS I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
“It’s about a woman who is a podcaster. She went to high school in New Hampshire…and she returns to teach some classes”—Michele Cobb, audiobook expert
FICTION BOOKS Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
“I thought, okay, it will be a very serious book about fundamentalism…But…this book is so funny. How she’s managed to make that subject funny and light, I don’t know”—Kit de Waal, novelist
HISTORY BOOKS ‘A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’ by Donald Rayfield
“The book shows how the Crimean khanate, which existed between the 14th and 18th centuries, was an important geopolitical power”—Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, political scientist
BIOGRAPHY/LITERARY FIGURES Jane’s Fame by Claire Harman
“It’s a two-fold book. A chunk of it is a flashback to Jane Austen’s actual life, but the bulk of the book is about her afterlife, the making of her reputation”—Lyndall Gordon, biographer
HISTORICAL FICTION The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
“Reading a Murakami novel can feel like setting out on a lonely journey through the deepest recesses of the human heart. It’s a disquieting experience, like wandering through a forest with no end in sight, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the deepest and densest of all those forests”—Rie Qudan, novelist
MEMOIR Twenty Letters to a Friend by Svetlana Alliluyeva
“Stalin had three children, but the one he was closest to when she was young was Svetlana…Her mother died by her own hand—evidently after a quarrel with Stalin—when Svetlana was about six”—Sheila Fitzpatrick, historian
SCIENCE FICTION The Man in the High Castle by Philip Dick
“The Man in the High Castle is, for my money, Philip K Dick’s best book. It’s set in the 1960s, in a world where Germany and Japan have won the Second World War and jointly occupy the United States”—Harry Turtledove, novelist
THE BEST KINDLES IN 2025 Which Kindle to get?
“That’s an easy question for me, Kindle Paperwhite is the most popular Kindle by far…It has all the best features that you would want”—Maneetpaul Singh, Kindle reviewer and author of Kindle Bookworm
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS Room by Emma Donoghue
“It’s narrated from the perspective of five-year-old Jack…That sense that these horrific things are taking place that we are seeing through his eyes and his naivety…it’s just so profoundly moving”—Hannah Beckerman, thriller writer
NONFICTION BOOKS Hitler by Ian Kershaw
“I don’t think that any historian should ever accept that a book is definitive. But I don’t see Kershaw’s work on Hitler really ever being surpassed”—Antony Beevor, military historian
FICTION Underworld by Don DeLillo
“It’s the kind of book that makes me want to make superlative, hyperbolic claims, like ‘the greatest novel of the twentieth century’… It’s such an extraordinarily vast and all-reaching book.”—Hermione Hoby, journalist
FUNNY BOOKS Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis
“I was shocked by how charming and amusing it was. I couldn’t believe he lived as long ago as he did. You would’ve thought he wrote it yesterday. It’s so modern and so amusing. It’s a very, very original piece of work”—Woody Allen, filmmaker
BOOKS FOR KIDS The Secrets of Vesuvius by Caroline Lawrence
“A good novel for kids about the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, part of the Roman Mysteries series”—Five Books editors
THE BEST MYSTERY BOOKS OF 2025, our annual list of prize shortlists and personal favourites, curated by Five Books editor, Sophie Roell
“A broad range of books are filed under ‘mysteries’ these days, and we try to give a flavour of what’s out there”
AI BOOKS ChatGPT-4 offers its own opinions on artificial intelligence “These books offer valuable insights into the development, challenges, and future prospects of AI”—ChatGPT-4, AI chatbot
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