BOOKS OF THE YEAR Introduced by @tanjil_rashid_ This time last year, I was experimenting with a career in teaching. Schools offer an amazing insight into the future of the written word. Books were once the most natural, most common and most important objects in a school, but today they have receded from school life. Schooling is now mediated not by the page but the screen. Of the dizzying number of wonderful books published each year – and recommended in our “Books of the year” feature – few will likely reach the eyes of young people. This was the year people started fretting about the consequences of this for what has historically been our book-oriented. A year ago, in the OECD’s once-in-a-decade skills survey, we learned that adults across the developed world are becoming less literate. According to the National Literacy Trust, enjoyment of reading among young people fell this year to its lowest ever recorded level (surveys began in 2005). Amid all this, the one book that seemed to find itself more, not less, read was Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which had argued in 1985 that declining literacy posed a threat to democracy. Whatever side you might think you’re on, you’re actually on the same side: the one that says, “We are passionate about the reading life!” That’s why, at the New Statesman, we haven’t just reviewed books in 2025; we’ve reflected on why they matter. There’s still so much life in literature. Our list of the year’s best books, selected by luminaries from Julian Barnes to Slavoj Žižek, speaks to that vitality, and for the first time this year we have also inaugurated a New Statesman fiction book of the year and nonfiction book of the year. Read our cover story to find out what they are:

How are we still making discoveries about the 5000-year-old ancestor to English, Latin, Czech, Hindi and many other languages? In our latest episode we get enthusiastic about figuring out Proto-Indo-European with @DannyBate4! soundcloud.com/lingthusiasm/…