Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s novel, The Discomfort of Evening, has won the International Booker Prize, making the Dutch author, 29, the youngest author to receive the prestigious literary award.
The Discomfort of Evening, translated into English by Michele Hutchison, beat out five other books for the prize, including Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s The Adventures of China Iron.
Rijneveld’s novel follows a 10-year-old girl whose family is torn apart following the death of her older brother. A reviewer for Kirkus called the book a “startling debut novel.”
Ted Hodgkinson, the chair of the judging panel for the award, said, “Combining a disarming new sensibility with a translation of singular sensitivity, The Discomfort of Evening is a tender and visceral evocation of a childhood caught between shame and salvation, and a deeply deserving winner of The 2020 International Booker Prize.”
Rijneveld and Hutchison will split the $66,000 cash prize for the award.
The International Booker Prize was first awarded in 2005. It was originally given to an author for their body of work, not a specific book, and awarded every two years. That changed in 2016, when the award became an annual one, given to a particular book.
Previous winners of the award have included Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith for The Vegetarian and David Grossman and translator Jessica Cohen for A Horse Walks Into a Bar.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
