The 2024 shortlist for the International Booker Prize was announced last week, introducing us to six books from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
The prize recognizes the vital work of translators with the £50,000 prize money divided equally: £25,000 (about $31,000 US) for the author and £25,000 for the translator (or divided equally between multiple translators). In addition, there is a prize of £5,000 for each of the shortlisted titles: £2,500 for the author and £2,500 for the translator (or divided equally between multiple translators).
The six books on the shortlist have been chosen by this year’s judging panel, chaired by esteemed writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel. She is joined by award-winning poet Natalie Diaz; Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera; ground-breaking visual artist William Kentridge; and writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.
“Reading is a necessary enlargement of human experience,” says Wachtel. “Why be confined to one perspective, one life? Novels carry us to places where we might never set foot and connect us with new sensations and memories. Our shortlist opens onto vast geographies of the mind, often showing lives lived against the backdrop of history or, more precisely, interweaving the intimate and the political in radically original ways.”
The International Booker Prize 2024 ceremony will take place from 7pm BST on Tuesday, 21 May. It is being held for the first time in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. Highlights from the event, including the announcement of the winning book for 2024, will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes’ channels, presented by Jack Edwards.
- Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott
- Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann
- The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
- Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae
- What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey
- Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
Want a chance to win a bundle of all six books on this year’s shortlist? The link to enter is here. ◊
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