6 titles shortlisted for 2022 International Booker Prize
The International Booker Prize has announced the six titles on their 2022 shortlist.
The annual award celebrates the best works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English and published in the U.K., or Ireland. The £50,000 (approx. $84,540 Cdn) grand prize is divided equally between writer and translator.
The finalists, selected from a longlist of 13, are:
- Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from Korean by Anton Hur
- A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated from Norwegian by Damion Searls
- Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd
- Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
- Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
- The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft
Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish writer and Nobel laureate, and American translator Jennifer Croft, are the only former winners of the prize on the shortlist. They won in 2018 for the novel Flights.
Their latest, The Books of Jacob, is an epic novel that begins on page 955 and ends on page one. It's set in the mid-18th century and follows a mysterious young Jewish man who settles down in a Polish village. It's not long before his charisma has attracted a cult of loyal disciples, who follow his every erratic move through the decade — crossing borders, changing religions and sowing chaos wherever they go.
The judges praised the book for weaving "an epic tapestry from the bizarre, mundane and utterly unpredictable sweep of history."
LISTEN | Jennifer Croft on Writers & Company:
Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell's novel Tomb of Sand was the first book to be translated from Hindi to appear on the longlist, and is now on the shortlist. The novel follows an 80-year-old woman in northern India, struggling in the aftermath of her husband's death. When she rises again, Ma decides to live a life free of social conventions, surprising her modern, bohemian daughter. Against her family's wishes, Ma travels to Pakistan to finally face the trauma she's been suppressing since her teenage years during Partition.
The judges described Tomb of Sand as, "a loud and irresistible novel."
Shree is an accomplished short story writer and novelist from New Delhi, India. Tomb of Sand is her first book to be published in the U.K. Daisy Rockwell resides in Vermont, U.S. and translates Hindi and Urdu literature.
Korean writer Bora Chung and her "richly imaginative" short story collection translated by Anton Hur are also on the shortlist. The stories in Cursed Bunny draw from horror, science fiction and magical realism to expose the tyranny of patriarchy and capitalism in the contemporary world.
"Each [story] is viscerally rooted in the real fears and pressures of everyday life," said the judges.
Chung has written three novels and three short story collections. She also translates modern literature from Russian and Polish into Korean. Hur is an award-winning translator based in Seoul. His previous translations include The Court Dancer and Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin, The Prisoner by Hwang Sok-yong and the bestseller Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, which was longlisted for this prize.
Mieko Kawakami's Heaven, translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd, tells the story of a 14-year-old boy who is relentlessly bullied at school. His only comfort is with a fellow classmate, who is also a victim of the bullies.
The judges called it, "an intense, claustrophobic novel."
Kawakami is a Tokyo writer whose past works include the bestselling novel Breasts and Eggs, and the novella My Ego, My Teeth and the World. Sam Bett and David Boyd are award-winning translators of Japanese literature from the U.S. They are working on Kawakami's novels together.
Claudia Piñeiro's Elena Knows, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle, is a genre-bending crime novel about a mother in poor health, who is determined to solve the cold case murder of her daughter, found dead in a church.
"Piñeiro's short and deeply felt novel, evokes the loneliness of ageing and the uncertainty of memory," said the judges.
Piñeiro is a bestselling crime writer and screenwriter from Argentina. Elena Knows previously won the German LiBeraturpreis. She is the third most translated Argentinian author. Riddle, originally from Texas and now living in Argentina, has also translated Spanish-language works by Isabel Allende, Leila Guerriro and María Fernanda Ampuero.
Jon Fosse's A New Name: Septology VI-VII, translated by Damion Searls from Norwegian, is the story of two doppelgängers, Asle and Asle, both painters who live alone, but one resides on the coast of Norway while the other leads a drunken life in the city. This is the final book in Fosse's Septology series.
The judges said A New Name "draws together art, death, and the idea of God with a vast, gentle grace."
Fosse is the author of over 30 books and 28 plays, including the Red, Black, Melancholia I & II, Aliss at the Fire and Morning and Evening. He is a chevalier of the Order national du Mérite of France and recipient of the International Ibsen Award, European Prize for Literature and Nordic Council Literature Prize. Searls is a translator from Minneapolis whose past award-winning work includes Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson, Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse and Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson.
The 2022 judging panel is comprised of translator and chair Frank Wynne, author Merve Emre, writer Petina Gappah, comedian Viv Groskop and translator and author Jeremy Tiang.
The winner will be announced on May 26.
The 2021 winner was David Diop's novel At Night All Blood Is Black, translated from French by Anna Moschovakis.
