The International Booker Prize 2023 longlist has been announced.
According to a statement by the organisers, the longlist features work from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, the oldest writer ever to be nominated and three writers who appear in English for the first time.
The judges, the statement adds, are looking for the best work of international fiction translated into English, selected from entries published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023.
The judges who say that “the list is a celebration of the power of language”, comprise of Parul Sehgal, Frederick Studemann, Uilleam Blacker, Leïla Slimani and Tan Twan Eng.
Chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani, who says that through literature we experience the fact that we are, at the end of the day, just human beings.
“We cry the same. We are moved by the same things. We are all afraid, we all fall in love and we have the same emotions. And this is the point of translation, that all over the world we can understand an emotion.
“What was very rewarding about this experience was reading books from all over the world, with an extraordinary variety of form and content. Each of the judges had different tastes and that is what we have tried to reflect in this list. It celebrates the variety and diversity of literary production today, the different ways in which the novel can be viewed. We wanted to give the reader the chance to discover this and to find something that will move or disturb them.
“The list is also a celebration of the power of language and of authors who wanted to push formal enquiry as far as possible. We wanted to celebrate literary ambition, panache, originality and of course, through this, the talent of translators who have been able to convey all of this with great skill,” she adds.
The 13 books on the longlist are listed below:
Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox
Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Rueben Woolley
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated by Daniel Levin Becker
While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer, translated by Katy Derbyshire
Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey
A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson, translated by Nichola Smalley
Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang
The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 18. The winning title will be announced at a ceremony at the Sky Garden in London on May 23, 2023.
