The Booker International Booker Prize today revealed the 13 books nominated for this year’s edition, by authors from 12 countries and 11 languages.
The nominees for this edition of the prize, which honours a literary work translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, are Catalan Eva Baltasar for “Boulder”, South Korean Cheon Myeong-kwan for “Whale”, France’s Maryse Condé for “The Gospel According To The New World”, and Ivory Coast’s Armand Gbaka-Brédé (who signs as GauZ’) for “Standing Heavy”.
Also nominated are Bulgarian Georgi Gospodinov, with “Time Shelter”, Norwegian Vigdis Hjorth, with “Is Mother Dead”, Ukrainian Andrei Kurkov, with “Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv”, French Laurent Mauvignier, for “The Birthday Party”, German Clemens Meyer, for “While We Were Dreaming”, Indian Perumal Murugan, for “Pyre”, Mexican Guadalupe Nettel, with “Still Born”, Swedish Amanda Svensson, for “A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding”, and Chinese Zou Jingzhi, with “Ninth Building”.
The selection was made by a jury chaired by writer Leila Slimani and comprising translator Uilleam Blacker, writer Tan Twan Eng, critic Parul Sehgal and Financial Times literary editor Frederick Studemann.
“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 jurors has 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 seen,” said Slimani, quoted in the statement.
The organisation pointed out that Maryse Condé is the oldest author ever nominated for the prize, at 89, and three writers (GauZ’, Zou Jingzhi and Amanda Svensson) are nominated with their English-language debut.
GauZ’ is a writer, editor and photographer who lived in Paris as an undocumented student, where he also worked as a security guard (a profession he shared in the past with German Clemens Meyer), before returning to his native Ivory Coast.
The list of finalists for the Booker International Prize will be revealed at the London Book Fair on 18 April, with a prize of five thousand pounds for the books that reach that stage, split 50-50 between author and translator.
The winning book will be announced on May 23rd, with a £50,000 prize, also split equally between author and translator.
None of the nominated works are published in Portugal, although some authors have books published in Portuguese territory, such as Andrei Kurkov (“Grey Bees”, by Porto Editora, in September last year), Guadalupe Nettel (“The Body in Which I Was Born”, by Teodolito, in 2013), Vigdis Hjorth (“Inheritance”, by Livros do Brasil, in 2021) and Eva Baltasar (“Permafrost”, by Kalandraka, in 2021).
Maryse Condé, born in Guadalupe, has published in Portugal “Eu, Tituba, bruxa… negra de Salem” (by Maldoror, in the past year).
