The Republic of Consciousness Prize Longlist 2025
Selected by the Bookshop
The Republic of Consciousness Prize celebrates outstanding literary fiction published by small presses in the UK and Ireland. The prize is open to fiction in all forms – novels, short stories, works in translation – and the prize money is split between all the shortlisted presses and writers.
From the publisher:
Translated by Karen Fleetwood & Laëtitia Saint-LoubertThe name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of…
From the publisher:
'They ran wild in packs. They spread disease. They fouled the pavements. They kept us awake and then infected our dreams. They bred faster than rabbits. They laughed at the police. Whole districts became no-go areas. Finally the government…
From the publisher:
Translated by Lara Vergnaud“A rare book that depicts the isolation and poetry of rural life.” Annie ErnauxEveryone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A…
From the publisher:
‘This is an extraordinary novel. It is shattering, almost unbearable, yet – so good, so clear – it is unputdownable.’ Roddy DoyleDeidre is a victim, of her family, her society, her history. That is…
From the publisher:
Translated from the French by Philip TerryLonglisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, listed by Marina WarnerBy the age of fifteen, Célina has lost her father to the sea, a…
From the publisher:
The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city’s most powerful men.Mother Naked is his name, and the story he’s come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the…
Recommended by Victoria
‘Hannah arrives in London as a teenage refugee from Eritrea with only the diary of her dead mother and memories of war-torn family life. She has to navigate the faceless UK asylum system, first in a foster home in Kilburn and then on the streets and parks of Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury. This is also where Hannah discovers her own and her parents’ subversive desires. The Seers is a short and powerful novel – by turns sexy, enraging, saddening – that also asks of the reader why it is that we so often insist on comparing, measuring and weighing incommensurable sufferings.’
From the publisher:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE 2024SKY ARTS AWARD NOMINEE for BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2024A Guardian BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024‘ALL THE HOT WOMEN I KNOW HAVE ELLA FREARS ON THEIR BEDSIDE TABLES’ Sheena…
From the publisher:
‘Jenni Daiches has astonishingly re-created a lost world... I wept and laughed and wished I had written it.’MIRIAM MARGOLYES'An urgent exploration of the fragility and beauty of our shared humanity, here and elsewhere.'HANNAH…
From the publisher:
How can a person speak when they lose faith in the authority of their voice? One night on the cusp of winter, a man sits alone, in silence, and begins to lay words on an empty page. He speaks of ancestry and stymied ambitions, of confusions…
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