The longlist for the International Booker Prize has been revealed, with Olga Tokarczuk, David Grossman, and Jon Fosse among the authors nominated for the literary award.
Nobel Prize winner Tokarczuk and translator Jennifer Croft made the list for The Books of Jacob. The Polish author and her translator won the International Booker in 2018 for Flights.
Israeli author Grossman and translator Jessica Cohen, who won the prize in 2017 for A Horse Walks Into a Bar, were nominated for More Than I Love My Life. Norwegian writer Fosse and translator Damion Searls, longlisted in 2020 for The Other Name: Septology I – II, made the longlist for A New Name: Septology VI – VII.
Geetanjali Shree became the first Hindi-language author to be nominated for the prize for Tomb of Sand, alongside translator Daisy Rockwell. Two Korean-language writers made the longlist: Sang Young Park for Love in the Big City and Bora Chung for Cursed Bunny; both books were translated by Anton Hur, who was a guest on the Kirkus podcast, Fully Booked, earlier this month.
Also nominated for the prize were Jona Eika’s After the Sun, translated by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg; Violaine Huisman’s The Book of Mother, translated by Leslie Camhi; Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven, translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd; Fernanda Melchor’s Paradais, translated by Sophie Hughes; Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s Happy Stories, Mostly; translated by Tiffany Tsao; Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows, translated by Frances Riddle; and Paulo Scott’s Phenotypes, translated by Daniel Hahn.
The shortlist for the award will be revealed on April 7, with the winner announced at a ceremony in London on May 26.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
