International Booker Prize Shortlist Features Six ‘Implicitly Optimistic’ Novels: Prize administrator Fiammetta Rocco states that this year’s International Booker shortlist includes works by Hwang Sok-yong of Korea and Jenny Erpenbeck of Germany that examine “divided families and societies.”
Josephine Bae chose Kim-Russell, Youngjae Mater 2-10, Hwang’s eighth English-translated novel. The 500-page novel follows three generations of railroad workers and a laid-off industrial worker through a century of Korean history.
Maya Jaggi of Guardian comments, “It offers a worker’s-eye view of the 20th-century history surrounding Korea’s partition.” Three years straight, the prize has shortlisted South Korean authors.
Radio broadcaster and judging chair Eleanor Wachtel called the six shortlisted works “obviously optimistic” despite their “engagement with contemporary realities of racism and oppression, global violence, and ecological catastrophe.” On May 21, London will announce translator and author winners of £25,000 each. Each finalist’s translator gets £2,500.
The selection committee chose Michael Hofmann’s translation of Erpenbeck’s Kairos, about a romance during the GDR’s downfall. Despite its dark love and politics, Natasha Walter commented in the Guardian that Erpenbeck’s hard and uncompromising imagination energizes till the last page.
Johnny Lorenz translated shortlisted first novel Itamar Vieira Junior’s Crooked Plow. Three generations of subsistence farmers live in Brazil’s poorest region after slavery ended in 1888.
The judges liked the film’s unique, intimate perspective. They stated its deep dive into quilombo communities delivers a unique look at resistance and land rights from characters’ personal and collective views.
The Wachtel judges were poet Natalie Diaz, novelist Romesh Gunesekera, visual artist William Kentridge, and writer, editor, and translator Aaron Robertson. Rocco said the panel chose from thirteen novels, four of them were by South American authors.
This selection launched a “second ‘boom'” for Latin American novels. The longlist includes 149 UK/Ireland publications from May 1, 2023, to April 30, 2024.
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Selva Almada is the fourth Argentine chosen since 2020 with her novel Not a River, translated by Annie McDermott. Three river fishermen’s “deceptively simple” story “slowly reveals a profound sense of foreboding and memories of trauma.”
The longlisted works A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, and The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by John Hodgson, Boris Dralyuk, and Oonagh Stransky, did not make the
Kira Josefsson translated Swedish novelist Ia Genberg’s The Details, which was shortlisted. A feverish woman recalls literature and memories. Hephzibah Anderson said in the Observer, “The nonlinear narrative renders the protagonist both vivid and obscure – the ideal conduit for this compelling, uncannily precise meditation on impermanence.”
The final film is Sarah Timmer Harvey’s version of Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About, narrated by a twin who lost her brother to suicide.
Says, “The book’s unfiltered examination of a sibling relationship, in conjunction with its uncommonly genuine portrayal of the grieving process, creates a narrative that is simultaneously profoundly perceptive and compassionate in its human nature.”
Previous recipients of the award have included Lucas Rijneveld, Han Kang, and Olga Tokarczuk. Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel, Bulgarian authors who translated the book, were awarded the 2023 prize for Time Shelter.
