The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for the finest single work of fiction from around the world which has been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The winner will be announced on 21st May. (shortlisted titles annotated by an asterisk).
Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott (book and ebook available)*
Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided?
Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn (book available)
‘Simpatia’ is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina’s departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Mart-n Ayala. Thanks to Ayala’s will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission – to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina.
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann (book available) *
Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.
The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson (book available)*
A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety. In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a get-well-soon message from an ex-girlfriend. Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend who introduced her to Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy, now a famous TV host in Sweden. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago without a phone number or an address and has no online footprint. Alejandro, who gleefully campaigns for a baby despite knowing their love has no future. And Brigitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret.
White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster (book available)
‘White Nights’, the debut short story collection from poet Urszula Honek, is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them.
Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae (book and ebook available)*
Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude
sit-in, ‘Mater 2-10’ vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation’s longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career – a masterpiece thirty years in the making.
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson (book available)
‘A Dictator Calls’ is inspired by three minutes in June 1934 when Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned Boris Pasternak. A gripping meditation on Soviet Russia, authoritarianism and literature, featuring a host of fascinating writers and historical figures.
The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk (book available)
Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion. When Samson Kolechko’s father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father’s collection of abacuses for company. Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him – or finish what the Cossack started.
What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey (book and ebook available)*
What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple ‘What I’d Rather Not Think About’. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko (book available)
Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero’s need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of fifteen; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend’s house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love – repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates.
The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky (book and ebook available)
The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federi, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It’s his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and steeped in the city’s language and imagery, ‘The House on Via Gemito’ is a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz (book available)*
Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches (book and ebook available)
Blending personal, historical and fictional modes, this work tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Incisive and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonisation.
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