Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Japan's Mieko Kawakami are among the novelists on the International Booker Prize shortlist, which features a Hindi novel for the first time.
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Geetanjali Shree wins International Booker Prize 2022
Her book "Tomb of Sand" is the first book in any Indian language to clinch the prize, which honors international translated fiction. She was picked from a shortlist that included five women authors.
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'Extraordinarily exuberant and incredibly playful book'
Translated by US-based painter and translator Daisy Rockwell (left), "Tomb of Sand" tells the story of an 80-year-old living in northern India who decides to travel to Pakistan and revisit the ghosts of the trauma following India and Pakistan's partition in 1947. The roughly €59,000 ($63,000) prize money will be split between New Delhi-based Shree and Rockwell, who lives in Vermont.
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'The Books of Jacob' by Olga Tokarczuk
Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk previously won the Man International Booker Prize in 2018 for her novel "Flights." This year, "The Books of Jacob" has been chosen by the jury and tells the story of Jacob Frank, a Jew who travels through Europe during the Age of Enlightenment, converting to Islam and Catholicism, and who is at times derided as a charlatan but also revered as a Messiah.
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'Heaven' by Mieko Kawakami
Japanese author Mieko Kawakami’s book tells the story of a 14-year-old boy who faces bullying but is resigned to his fate. Translated by Sam Bett, the book is a "haunting novel of violence that can stalk our teenage years."
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'Elena Knows' by Claudia Pineiro
Argentinian Claudia Pineiro's book has been translated by Frances Riddle and tells the story of a murder victim whose mother undertakes the search for her daughter's killer after officials close the case. Booker organizers say the novel "unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society."
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'A New Name: Septology VI-VII' by Jon Fosse
The only man on the short list, Fosse explores "the human condition and a radically 'other' reading experience — incantatory, hypnotic and utterly unique," the Booker website says. The series tells the story of Asle, an aging painter who lives on the coast of Norway and his doppelganger. The books have been translated by Damion Searls.
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'Cursed Bunny' by Bora Chung
The Korean author has been writing novels and short stories for some time, and "Cursed Bunny," also a collection of short stories, defies genres and mainstream ideas of storytelling. "These are stories about survival that reveal the evils of survival at the expense of another person and often lead to vicious consequences," a user wrote on the readers platform Goodreads.
Image: 2022 - Booker Prize Foundation
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The jury of the International Booker Prize, awarded annually to a book that has been translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland, has announced the names of the final candidates and their novels at the London Book Fair on April 7.
"Wildly original works of literature that will captivate readers, this year's shortlisted books all explore trauma, whether on an individual or societal level," the jury said in a press statement released after the announcement.
Here is the shortlist:
'Cursed Bunny'
Written by Korean author Bora Chung, "Cursed Bunny" is a collection of short stories.
According to the jury, her book "uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society."
The book has been translated by Anton Hur, who was born in Sweden and is living in South Korea for the last 30 years. Hur featured twice in this year's longlist — his translation of "Love in the Big City" by Korean author Sang Young Park was also in the list of the 13 nominees announced by the Booker committee earlier this year.
'Heaven'
In "Heaven," Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami tells the story of a 14-year-old who is bullied by his friends but accepts his victim's role with resignation.
"This is a haunting novel of the threat of violence that can stalk our teenage years," the jury said in its statement.
The novel has been translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
Kawakami reacted to the announcement by thanking her team and her readers in a tweet.
'Tomb of Sand'
Indian author Geetanjali Shree's book is the first Hindi novel to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. The story explores the life of an 80-year-old woman living in northern India, who decides to go to Pakistan to confront her teenage trauma of the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Indian author Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand' features in this year's shortlistImage: 2022 - Booker Prize Foundation
The jury called it "an engaging protest against the destructive impact of borders." The novel has been translated by Daisy Rockwell, US-based painter, writer and translator. Rockwell was "Feeling a bit dazed by this news at the moment," she wrote on Twitter.
'The Books of Jacob'
Written by 2018 Nobel literature laureate Olga Tokarczuk,"The Books of Jacob" takes readers to the age of Enlightenment in Europe and on a journey with Jacob Frank, a young Jew of mysterious origins, who gains a fervent following. He traverses the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires, converting into Islam and then to Catholicism.
The book has been translated by Jennifer Croft, whose translation of Tokarczuk's "Flights" won the International Booker Prize in 2018.
'Elena Knows'
Argentinian Claudia Pineiro explores the genre of crime fiction anew with her novel, telling the story of a mother who sets out to look for her daughter's killers after officials close the murder case.
"A unique story that interweaves crime fiction with intimate tales of morality and the search for individual freedom" is what the jury had to say about the novel.
It has been translated by Frances Riddle, who has also rendered books by authors like Isabel Allende into English.
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'A New Name: Septology VI-VII'
As the title suggests, this book is the final in a series of seven books by Norwegian author Jon Fosse — the only male candidate featuring in the shortlist.
The story is about a painter called Asle, living on the Norwegian coast among his friends, but plagued by his "doppelgänger," a man with a completely opposite version of his life.
The jury called the book "a transcendent exploration of the human condition."
It has been translated by Damion Searles.
Special recognition for translators
The nominees were named by the chair of judges, Frank Wynne, who emphasized the importance of translators of these works.
"Translation is an intimate, intricate dance that crosses borders, cultures and languages. There is little to compare to the awe and exhilaration of discovering the perfect pairing of writer and translator," Wynne said.
The winners of the prize will be named on 26 May. The prize money of 50,000 pounds (€60,092, $65,230) will be shared by the author and the translator of the work. Additionally, shortlisted authors and translators will receive 2,500 pounds each.
The Booker Prize: The winners who changed literature
The Booker Prize has been called the Oscars of world literature. From 1997 winner Arundhati Roy to 2020 surprise recipient Douglas Stuart, here's a list of celebrated winners.
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Arundhati Roy - 'The God of Small Things' (1997)
Arundhati Roy took the literary world by storm in 1997 with her story of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha coming of age amid political turbulence in Kerala in Southern India. Against the backdrop of their struggling blind grandmother's factory, the story set in the late 1960s dwells on India's entrenched caste society, its religious diversity and complex social hierarchies.
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Michael Ondaatje - 'The English Patient' (1992)
Michael Ondaatje’s celebrated 1992 Booker-winning novel explores four lives that intersect in an Italian villa as World War II draws to an end and bombs fall on Hiroshima. An exhausted nurse, a maimed thief and a wary military engineer are haunted by the English patient upstairs, who is burned beyond recognition. The novel was adapted into a 1996 film that won nine Oscars.
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Margaret Atwood - 'Blind Assassin' (2000)
The Canadian author might be best known for "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985), but "The Blind Assassin" won her the Booker prize in 2000. "A multilayered drama that weaves its narrative threads across past and present, fiction and reality," said the jury of this iconic story about an aging woman who reflects on her sister's mysterious early death and the resulting scandal.
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Hilary Mantel - 'Bring up the Bodies' (2012)
The sequel to Hilary Mantel's Tudor England historical novel "Wolf Hall" (also a Booker winner, making her the first woman and British author to win twice), "Bring Up the Bodies" sees Anne Boleyn, for whom Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church, fail to bear a son to secure the Tudor line. The king’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, must now find a solution to secure his own future.
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Richard Flanagan - 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' (2014)
Set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, the Australian author's historical novel was a brutal depiction of the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway during World War II. It centers on an Australian surgeon in the camp who remains haunted by his affair with his uncle's young wife as he struggles to save men from starvation, cholera and torture.
George Saunders - 'Lincoln in the Bardo' (2017)
American short story writer George Saunders' first full-length novel, "Lincoln in the Bardo," was an experimental work that was praised by the judging chair for "its innovation ... the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost-dead souls." It sees President Abraham Lincoln visit the body of his 11-year-old son, whose soul still lives on, in a Washington cemetery in 1862.
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Bernardine Evaristo - 'Girl, Woman, Other' (2019)
"With vivid originality, irrepressible wit and sly wisdom, Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country," wrote the Booker Prize jury of the first Black writer to win the prize (shared with Margaret Atwood for "The Testaments"). The novel traces the lives of 12 mostly women and Black people coming of age in the UK across diverse generations and social classes.
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Douglas Stuart - 'Shuggie Bain' (2020)
It took 10 years to write and was rejected 32 times before it was finally published. Yet the 2020 Booker Prize jury needed just an hour to pick Douglas Stuart's "Shuggie Bain" as the winner from six shortlisted works. "I am absolutely stunned," said Stuart. The debut novel draws on his own life growing up gay in impoverished Glasgow in the 1980s while struggling with his mother's alcoholism.
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Damon Galgut - 'The Promise' (2021)
It was third time lucky for South African author Damon Galgut. Shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, he won in 2021 for "The Promise," beating out one other previously shortlisted author, Richard Powers. The novel tells the story of a white South African farming family across four decades and the failure to fulfill the matriarch's dying wish — to gift a house on the property to a Black woman worker.