International Booker Prize 2024: A reader’s guide to the 13 translated books on the longlist

Each year the International Booker Prize recognises the best novels and short story collections from around the world that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between the author and the translator. In addition, a prize of £5,000 is also divided equally between shortlisted authors and translators.

The 13 books on the longlist have been chosen by a jury chaired by broadcaster and journalist Eleanor Wachtel, poet Natalie Diaz, novelist Romesh Gunesekera, visual artist William Kentridge, and editor and translator Aaron Robertson.

A quarter of the list is written by South American authors, with books representing Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela. The longlisted books have been translated from Albanian, Dutch, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. The inaugural winner of the prize in 2005, Ismail Kadare, has made it to the longlist while nine authors and nine translators have been listed for the first time.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on April 9 and the winning title will be announced at a ceremony in London on May 21.

Here is a guide to the 13 longlisted titles.

The Silver Bone, Andrey Kurkov, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

Kyiv, 1919. The...

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