The International Booker Prize 2023 longlist has been announced. It features work from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, the oldest writer ever to be nominated, three writers who appear in English for the first time, and books translated from 11 languages
The panel of judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani. The panel also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times.
The 2023 judges are looking for the best work of international fiction translated into English, selected from entries published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023. The books, authors and translators the prize celebrates offer readers a window onto the world and the opportunity to experience the lives of people from different cultures.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 18. The winning title will be announced at a ceremony at the Sky Garden in London on May 23, 2023.
The longlist includes:
Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang;
A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson, translated by Nichola Smalley;
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey;
Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan;
While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer, translated by Katy Derbyshire;
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker;
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Reuben Woolley;
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund;
Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne;
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel;
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox;
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim;
Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches.
The longlist includes:
- The first nominations for books originally written in Bulgarian, Catalan and Tamil
- A wife and husband author-translator team
- Works originating in 12 countries
- The oldest writer ever to be nominated for the prize, aged 89
- One of Ukraine’s best-known writers, who has vowed to stop writing in Russian
- A film director, four poets, two former security guards – and a writer who had declared himself ‘dead’
- Elements of Korean fairy tale, French horror, Caribbean gospel, Indian melodrama, Scandinavian saga – and East Germany’s answer to Trainspotting