International Booker Prize Shortlist Readings

The International Booker Prize celebrates the world’s best fiction, in translation. Each year it introduces readers to the finest novels and short story collections from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.

This year’s judging panel is chaired by esteemed writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel and includes award-winning poet Natalie Diaz; Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera; ground-breaking visual artist William Kentridge; and acclaimed writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.

Along with its celebration of international fiction, the prize recognises the vital work of translators with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between the author and the translator. In addition, the shortlisted authors and translators each receive £2,500. The long-list is announced in March, the shortlist in April and the winner in May, following the event.

This year’s shortlist is: Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott, published by Charco Press; Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann, published by Granta Books; The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson, published by Wildfire Books; Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae, published by Scribe UK; What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey, published by Scribe UK; Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz, published by Verso Fiction.

Shahidha Bari is an academic and broadcaster. She is a professor at the University of the Arts London and presents Front Row and Free Thinking on BBC Radio 4. She’s the author of Dressed: The Philosophy of Clothes, and Look Again: Fashion (Tate, 2022). She is a Trustee of The Brontë Parsonage and a regular books reviewer for The Guardian and the Financial Times.