Team B’s Top Books of 2025 – Sam

We’re counting down to Christmas with Team B’s books of the year… here’s Sam’s shortlist, with The Strangers by Ekow Eshun taking the coveted top spot!

An audacious and affecting exploration of Black masculinity across two centuries. Written in the second person, The Strangers invites the reader into the lives of five figures—Ira Aldridge, Matthew Henson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X and Justin Fashanu—each facing a moment of reckoning that will both cement their reputation and label them outsiders. Sam says: “Deeply felt and imagined, interspersed with illuminating essays, this is the most groundbreaking biography I’ve read in years.”