Sunday Times 25 Best Novels of 21st Century

As we come to closer to the end of 2025, there are many 'best of' lists being published, documenting the best books of the first 25 years of the 21st Century. I love a good list and have explored many of those on this blog, including:

• The New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'
• Readings '30 Best Australian Books of the 21st Century'
• ABC Radio National's 'Top 100 Books of the 21st Century' 

The Sunday Times (UK) recently released their '25 Best Novels of the 21st Century'.  This is another interesting list, which includes many books on the NYT list and some of my favourites. It also includes a number of novels I have not read or even heard of. 

Here is their list*:

• 25. Zadie Smith - White Teeth (2000)
• 24. Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass (2000)
• 23. Matthew Kneale - English Passengers (2000)
• 22. William Boyd - Any Human Heart (2002)
• 21. Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003)
• 20. Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal (2003)
• 19. David Peace - Nineteen Eighty-Three (2008)
• 18. Edward St Aubyn - Mother’s Milk (2006)
• 17. Colm Toibin - Brooklyn (2009)
• 16. Eimer McBride - A Girl is a Half Formed Thing (2013)
• 15. Rachel Cusk - Outline (2014)
• 14. Anne Enright - The Green Road (2015)
• 13. Sebastian Barry - Days Without End (2016)
• 12. Francis Spufford - Golden Hill (2016)
• 11. Sally Rooney - Conversations With Friends (2017)
• 10. Pat Barker - The Silence of the Girls (2018)
• 9. Andrew Miller - Now We Shall Be Entirely Free (2018)
• 8. Anna Burns - Milkman (2018)
• 7. Douglas Stuart - Shuggie Bain (2020)
• 6. Paul Murray - The Bee Sting (2023)
• 5. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)
• 4. Ian McEwan - Atonement (2001)
• 3. Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These (2021)
• 2. Alan Hollinghurst - The Line of Beauty (2004)
• 1. Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies (2012)

* Bold = Read, Link is to my review

I have only read 10 of the 25 novels, and there are only about three or four left on the list which I have on my To Be Read pile. There are others that haven't been on my radar so it is good to add a few more to the pile. 

Having said that, I am so pleased they put Philip Pullman on the list. While The Amber Spyglass is not my favourite in the His Dark Materials trilogy, its inclusion is warranted as the series is brilliant. I also happy to see Toibin, McEwan, Barker, Enright and Keegan on the list - although I admit I preferred Enright's The Wren The Wren (2023) to  The Green Road. There are also few here that did not work for me - like Haddon and Ishiguro - which always pop up on 'best of' lists but I could not warm to. 

I am sure there will be more of these lists published as we come to the end of the year. Looking forward to seeing what other lists there are.

Prime Minister's Literary Award Winners 2025

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2025 Winners have been announced. These awards have a significant prize pool ($600K) and serve to recognise 'established and emerging Australia writers, illustrators, poets and historians'. 

The Winners are:

Fiction: Michelle de Krester - Theory and Practice 

Continuing her sweep of awards this year, de Krester won the Stella Prize this year and was  shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.  This novel tells the story of a young woman in Melbourne in 1986. There to research the novels of Virginia Woolf, she meets Kit and her ambitions change.  The judges said: "In Theory & Practice Michelle de Krester masterfully tests the limits of the novel as a form to investigate power in all its complexity. Moving between fictional, autofictional and essayistic modes, this novel is elegant, playful and razor sharp. It plays with and tests readers' assumptions about authors and narrators, lived experience and fiction, and how these assumptions are shaped by gender, ethnicity and class." I have a copy of this novel and look forward to reading it. 

Non-Fiction: Rick Morton - Mean Streak

I am thrilled Rick Morton won for this book on Robodebt - an important work on the illegal federal government scheme which traumatised so many poor people. The judges said: "Morton’s writing redefines people demonised as ‘welfare cheats’ to victims of their own government. Morton combed the ample public evidence to develop a narrative to help the reader understand how modern government overreach occurs.... With single-minded determination, Morton successfully distils a government’s disgrace into an enthralling account of what happens when we lose our collective conscience." I loved Morton's memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt (2018) and have been an avid reader of his journalism. 

Australian History: Geraldine Fela - Critical Care: Nurses on the frontline of Australia's AIDS Crisis

Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela shines the spotlight on the compassionate nurses who cared for people with HIV and AIDS.  The judges said: "Critical Care examines Australia’s response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s from the perspective of health care practitioners and patients. Written with empathy and narrative flair, it takes the reader inside remote Indigenous communities, regional areas, and city hospitals. Built on interviews with over thirty nurses and many of those who survived HIV, Fela maps the human response to a public health emergency with compassion, insight, and an acute eye for telling detail." 

 

The Prime Minister's Literary awards also cover Children's Literature, Young Adult Literature and Poetry. In these categories the following won this year's award:

• Poetry: David Brooks - The Other Side of Daylight: New and Selected Poems
• Young Adult: Krystal Sutherland - The Invocations
• Children's Literature: Peter Carnavas - Leo and Ralph

Silver Strike

The Hallmarked Man (2025) is the eighth novel in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott private detective series. The story begins a few months after the events of The Running Grave (2023) which saw Robin undercover at Chapman Farm, exposing the wrongdoings of a cult. She is still recovering from the trauma of that case, supported by her business partner Strike and her police officer boyfriend Ryan Murphy.

A new case comes to the agency. Decima Mullins is convinced a man murdered in the vault of a silver shop is her missing boyfriend, Rupert Fleetwood. Mullins hires the detectives to prove it was him, as she knows Fleetwood would not have left her. The police think they have identified the mutilated body as Jason Knowles, a member of a crime family. If the detective agency were to prove the police got it wrong, Strike would find himself showing up the Met again. To make matters worse, Mullins and Fleetwood have ties to people in Strike's past, and there may be a Masonic element to the murder, so they need to tread carefully. As they start their enquiries, Strike and Ellacott discover that there are a number of candidates for the mutilated body in the silver shop and they need to rule out each one before they can give Mullins the answer she needs.

While they are on the main case, the agency's team of investigators are spread across a number of other matters - tailing a woman to find evidence of infidelity, following a man who may be taking advantage of his elderly mother - and this helps propel the story forward. Back are the familiar faces of Dev, Midge, Wardle, Barclay and Pat, the curmudgeonly office manager who is one of my favourite characters. Joining the team is Kim Cochran, ex-police detective, who has her eyes on Strike. 

But the heart of the series is the relationship between Strike and Ellacott, which has evolved over their seven years working together. They secretly have feelings for one another, but continually second guess whether the other shares their affections. Strike is determined to find just the right time to profess his love for Robin, but this is complicated as she has been getting closer to her boyfriend Murphy. Strike also has to deal with his nemesis, journalist Dominic Culpepper, who is determined to undermine Strike in the press.

The Hallmarked Man is an action-packed pageturner of a novel. Rowling expertly juggles multiple plot lines, bringing them all together in a gripping conclusion.  In addition to familiar London locations - Denmark Street, the Blind Spot secret bar, Freemasons Hall and other stomping grounds - we are taken to Crieff, Yorkshire, Shropshire, Sardinia and Sark in the Channel Islands. 

As I have done with the past few novels in this series, I read my hardcover along with listening to the audiobook expertly performed by Robert Gleinister. He perfectly captures Strike, Ellacott and all the characters, adding drama and excitement to the telling of this tale.

Rowling knows how to leave her readers wanting more. The Hallmarked Man, like the previous novels, ends in a delectable cliffhanger. Let's hope she is already working on number nine and we don't have to wait too long to find out what happens next!

My reviews of previous books in the series are available on this blog:

• The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) 
•  The Silkworm (2014) 
• Career of Evil (2016)
• Lethal White (2018)
• Troubled Blood (2020)
• The Ink Black Heart (2022)
• The Running Grave (2023)