The longlist for the International Booker Prize has been revealed, with 13 books in contention for the prestigious British literary award given to works of fiction translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland.
Ismail Kadare, the Albanian author who won the first-ever International Booker Prize, made the longlist for A Dictator Calls, translated by John Hodgson. German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, who was longlisted in 2018 for Go, Went, Gone, was nominated this year for Kairos, translated by Michael Hofmann.
The House on Via Gemito, written by Italy’s Domenico Starnone and translated by Oonagh Stransky, was longlisted for the award, alongside Not a River, written by Selva Almada (Argentina) and translated by Annie McDermott; Simpatía, written by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón (Venezuela) and translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn; The Details, written by Ia Genberg (Sweden) and translated by Kira Josefsson; and White Nights, written by Urszula Honek (Poland) and translated by Kate Webster.
Mater 2-10, written by Hwang Sok-yong (South Korea) and translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae, made the longlist, as did The Silver Bone: The Kyiv Mysteries, written by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine) and translated by Boris Dralyuk; What I’d Rather Not Think About, written by Jente Posthuma (Netherlands) and translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey; Lost on Me, written by Veronica Raimo (Italy) and translated by Leah Janeczko; Crooked Plow, written by Itamar Vieira Junior (Brazil) and translated by Johnny Lorenz; and Undiscovered, written by Gabriela Wiener (Peru) and translated by Julia Sanches.
The shortlist for the award will be announced on April 9, with the winner revealed at a ceremony in London on May 21.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
