Booker Prize 2025 Longlist

‘Remember – words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency.’ 

Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. 

A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers. 

Through a voyeuristic lens, Universality focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean. The follow-up novel to Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a compellingly nasty celebration of the spectacular force of language. It dares you to look away.