The International Booker Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards, presented every year to the greatest fiction book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland the previous year. The award is presented to both the original writer and the translator, and the prize money is split evenly between them.
The longlist for the International Booker Prize 2024 was revealed on March 11, with 13 books contending for the world’s most prestigious prize for a single piece of translated literature.
Below are the 13 books that have been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024:
1. Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott.
2. Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn.
3. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann.
4. The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson.
5. White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster.
6. Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae.
7. A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson.
8. The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk.
9. What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey.
10. Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko.
11. The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky.
12. Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz.
13. Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches.
As per the Guardian, the prize also acknowledges the efforts of translators, with the £50,000 (approximately Rs 52 lakh) prize money distributed equally between the author and translator, as well as a £5,000 (about Rs 5 lakh) prize for each of the shortlisted titles.
The six shortlisted novels will be announced on April 9, this year, followed by the winner on May 21, 2024, at a ceremony in London that will also be livestreamed.
In addition, here are a few things you should know about the International Booker Prize 2024 longlist.
– The list signals a second ‘boom’ in Latin American fiction, featuring writers from Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela.
– The works on the list have been translated from ten different languages: German, Italian, Albanian, Dutch, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.
-The list includes the best worldwide fiction in a variety of genres, including love stories, and humour stories, among others.
-Many of the works are about and examine various elements of family life, such as the bond between dads and sons or daughters and mothers.
-While many of the books and authors are unknown in the UK, some have been best-sellers in their own countries.