International Booker Prize reveals 13-book longlist, 2024 prize jury chaired by Eleanor Wachtel

Thirteen titles from around the world, including Brazil, Italy, Sweden and Korea, have made the longlist for the 2024 International Booker Prize.  

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 ($86,362.70 Cdn) grand prize is divided equally between writer and translator.

The prize was set up to boost the profile of fiction in other languages — which accounts for only a small share of books published in Britain — and to salute the underappreciated work of literary translators.

There are no Canadian books on the longlist. Nine writers are nominated for the first time while the first ever winner of the prize, Ismail Kadare, is on the list for A Dictator Calls. Prior to 2016, the prize was awarded every other year for an author's body of work.

The complete 13-book longlist is:

• Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott  
• Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon, translated from Spanish by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn  
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann  
• The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
• White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated from Polish by Kate Webster  
• Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae  
• A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated from Albanian by John Hodgson  
• The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated from Russian by Boris Dralyuk
• What I'd Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey  
• Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated from Italian by Leah Janeczko  
• The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated from Italian by Oonagh Stransky
• Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz  
• Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated from Portuguese by Julia Sanches

This year's jury is chaired by Eleanor Wachtel, who hosted CBC Radio's Writers & Company for 33 years before retiring in June 2023. The show is currently airing as repeats on CBC Radio.

LISTEN | A celebration of Eleanor Wachtel and Writers & Company: 

Writers and Company1:35:08Celebrating Writers & Company: 33 years of exceptional interviews with the incomparable Eleanor Wachtel

For Writers & Company's final original episode, Eleanor Wachtel is interviewed on-stage by Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio's The Current. She then speaks with American authors Brandon Taylor and Gary Shteyngart, and receives surprise greetings from the likes of Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.

"Here are voices that reflect original angles of observation. In compelling, at times lyrical modes of expression, they tell stories that give us insight into —  among other things — the ways political power drives our lives," Wachtel said about the longlist in a press statement.

Joining Wachtel on the jury are American poet Natalie Diaz, Sri Lankan novelist Romesh Gunesekera, South African visual artist William Kentridge and Italian writer and translator Aaron Robertson.

"Over more than 30 years of interviewing the very best international authors, I have come to understand the power of translators to open borders of the imagination and to create a worldwide community of readers. Alongside those writers who speak to us of the culture of their homelands, many of the finest voices also come from diasporic experiences, of displacement and exile. They bring us a bifocal image of the world — where they've come from and where they've landed. The translation of their work into English carries this movement forward. Literature subverts, it questions the lines we draw between people and places, our expectations, revealing an interiority that can change everything," Wachtel said in a press statement when she was announced as a juror.

"I'm so looking forward to sharing these explorations with my fellow judges — an ad hoc book club of renowned writers, artists and readers."

Books published in the U.K. or Ireland between May 1, 2023 and April 30, 2024 were eligible for this year's prize. Authors of any nationality are eligible. Publishers submitted 149 books, translated from 32 languages, for consideration.

• 33 years of exceptional interviews with the incomparable Eleanor Wachtel

The shortlist will be announced on April 9 and the winner will be announced on May 21.

Last year's winner was Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov and translator Angela Rodel for the novel for Time Shelter, a darkly comic novel about the dangerous appeal of nostalgia. Winning the International Booker gave Time Shelter a large sales lift: according to the prize, 20,000 copies were sold in the U.K. in the first 10 days after it won.