Nine of the 13 books nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize, the award for fiction translated into English, were written by women.
All but one novel on the entire long-list is under 300 pages, with the majority being under 200 pages. Chair of judges Max Porter, said the books contained stories of “people are sharing strategies for survival; they are cheating, lying, joking and innovating. Some people are no longer of this earth, or they are sending visions from the future or from parallel universes.”
“These books bring us into the agony of family, workplace or nation-state politics, the near-spiritual secrecy of friendship, the inner architecture of erotic feeling, the banality of capitalism and the agitations of faith.”
Japanese novelist Saou Ichikawa’s Hunchback, (translated by Polly Barton) is just 100-pages long and traces the sexual desires of a disabled care home resident, who lives with a congenital muscle disorder, and one day asks her new male carer to donate sperm. Already a smash-hit bestseller in her home country, Ichikawa, 46, became the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award, Akutagawa Prize, in 2023.
Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume I, (translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland) is a 161-page novel where an antiquarian book dealer named Tara finds herself reliving the same day (November 18th) over and again. Volume II is equally short, at 181-pages. In 2022, she was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize, for the first three of a planned series of seven volumes about Tara’s dislocation from time.
Balle, 62, published her first book, Lyrebird in 1986 before writing one of the most popular works of Danish literature in 1993, According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind.
New York-based Palestinian novelist, short story writer, and journalist, Ibtisam Azem, was long-listed for her second novel, The Book of Disappearance which imagines all the Palestinians in Israel suddenly disappearing one day. The novel, first published in Arabic in 2014, was translated by Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon in 2019, and has been described as a “rich, potent novel…[with a] seductively bold concept.”
In Gaëlle Bélem’s “mordantly funny” novel, There’s a Monster Behind the Door, the story follows a young girl growing up in La Réunion in the 1980s, yearning to become a novelist while trying desperately to detach herself from her “sadistic parents’ reign of terror”.
Translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert, the original French edition won several major prizes, including the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and Prix André Dubreuil du Premier Roman in 2020. Bélem, a 40-year old French writer of Réunionese extraction, told RadioMoLi that “This book has always been in my mind, waiting to appear since I was probably, 20-years old, I just had to look around me…listen to other people.”
“I wanted to write a novel about the splendours and miseries of the poor of Réunion. Because I couldn’t find the right book, I decided to write it.”
Thirty-nine year old Mexican writer and activist Dahlia de la Cerda was long-listed for her debut collection of short stories, Reservoir Bitches translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary. Judges described the collection as “a blisteringly urgent” that “absolutely bangs from the first page to the last.”
“It’s extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators’ approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don’t, in a world of labyrinthine dangers.”
“Under the Eye of the Big Bird,” has also been nominated. Written by one of Japanese most popular contemporary novelists, Hiromi Kawakami, the speculative novel, translated by Asa Yoneda, imagines a future where humans are on the brink of extinction.
“Kawakami’s prose is often clinically deadpan, but she also finds humour and warmth in the puzzles of existence and extinction,” one critic wrote.
77-year old Surinamese-Dutch writer Astrid Roemer is the oldest nominee on this year’s long-list. Her book, On a Woman’s Madness was translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott, and tells the story of a courageous Black woman escaping an abusive marriage.
Originally published in 1982, the judges commented, “Through its heightened understanding of character and history filtered through a lush and enriched language, Astrid Roemer draws from suffering, heat, and imprisonment to create a story of love, survival, and freedom that translator Lucy Scott expertly reweaves into English with an empathetic, artistically accomplished touch.”
Anne Serre’s sixth book, A Leopard-Skin Hat, was translated by Mark Hutchinson and follows the deeply romantic story of a platonic love story between two childhood friends. Serre, a 64-year old French writer, is known for her short works. Judges described the novel as “a perfectly balanced book, slender in size but bearing significant weight all the way through” and “a testament to the ways in which we continue to hold the people we love in our memories, with respect and dignity, after they die.”
The ninth female author to be long-listed for this year’s International Booker is Indian writer and lawyer Banu Mushtaq, for her novel, Heart Lamp translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi.
The other long-listed titles include Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu (translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter), Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (translated from French by Helen Stevenson), Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (translated by Daniel Bowles from German) and Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes.
Last year, the International Booker Prize was awarded to German writer Jenny Erpenbeck for her novel, Kairos translated by Michael Hofmann. Previous winners have included Nobel Prize winning writers, Han Kang for The Vegetarian and Olga Tokarczuk for “Flights”.
Since 2016, the prize has been awarded to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland in the past 12 months. Prize winning authors share the 50,000 pound prize money ($AUD100,460.00) with their translators.
The judges will now narrow the list down to six titles, which will be announced on April 8. The winner will be revealed on May 20, at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.