International Booker Prize 2026: A reader’s guide to the 13 titles in translation on the longlist

All information related to the books sourced from publishers.

The 2026 International Booker Prize longlist was announced on February 24.

This year’s jury is being chaired by author Natasha Brown. She is joined by writer, broadcaster and Oxford University Professor of Mathematics and for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy; International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes; writer, Lolwe editor and bookseller Troy Onyango; and novelist and columnist Nilanjana S Roy.

The prize “recognises a vital work of translation”, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between the winning author and translator. The shortlist of six books will be announced on March 31. Each shortlisted title will be awarded a prize of £5,000, divided equally between the author and translator.

The winner will be announced on May 19 at the Tate Modern, London.

The books on the longlist feature a queer Argentinian conquistador, a morally compromised German film director, a “sworn virgin” who renounces womanhood, a child-star-turned-thief, a Japanese novelist with a “monstrous appetite”, an idiosyncratic Italian aristocrat and a Danish noblewoman accused of sorcery. The stories are set between a brutal prison colony in a remote corner of Brazil to an Albanian village ruled by ancient laws, from an asylum for traumatised soldiers in Belgium to an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran.

The 13 books have been translated from 11 languages by authors and translators representing 14 nationalities. There are three debuts, along with 13 previous nominees, including five returning author-translator pairings. Two books on the longlist were published in their original languages over 30 years ago. The Iranian book, written by an author previously imprisoned for her writing, is banned in her country. Longlisted authors include an award-winning actor, a historian of mountains and forests, an environmental and feminist activist, and writers of manga, screenplays and poetry.

Here is the complete longlist:

The Nights are Quiet in Tehran, Shida Bazyar, translated from the German by Ruth Martin

1979. Behsad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.

1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behsad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.

1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.

2009. Laleh’s brother Mo, is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down …

A topical, moving novel about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom.

We Are Green and Trembling, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers

From deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso writes a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the convent he escaped as a young girl. Since leaving his past behind, he’s become Antonio, conquistador. Now, hiding in the jungle and hounded by the army he deserted, Antonio is caring for two Guaraní girls he rescued from enslavement. But the New World has one more metamorphosis in store, which might save them all from extinction.

We Are Green and Trembling conveys glimmers of hope for the future within the brutal colonial history of Latin America, finding in the rainforest a magical space for transformation.

The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje, translated from the Dutch by David McKay

Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognises Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn’t turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand’s biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne’s stories about him. But how can he be certain that she’s telling the truth?

In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatised man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne’s word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest works of literature can achieve.

The Deserters, Mathias Enard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell

Fleeing a nameless war, a soldier emerges from the Mediterranean scrubland, filthy, exhausted and seeking refuge. A chance meeting forces him to rethink his journey, and the price he puts on a life. On 11 September 2001, aboard a small cruise ship near Berlin, a scientific conference pays tribute to the late Paul Heudeber, an East German mathematician, Buchenwald survivor, communist and anti-fascist whose commitment to his side of the Wall was unshaken by its collapse. The oblique pull between these two narratives – a cipher in itself – brings to light everything that is at stake in times of conflict: truth and deception, loyalty and betrayal, hope and despair.

The Deserters lays bare the ravages of war on the most intimate aspects of life – and asks what remains of our selves in its wreckage.

Small Comfort, Ia Genberg, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson

From an interview with a child-star-turned-thief to the mysterious death of an employee at a drug manufacturer – or the couple feigning marital bliss to keep their inheritance, Ia Genberg carefully unravels the value we place on both money and people.

What does it really mean to be in debt to someone? How does our financial worth permeate the ways we think and feel? And what do we lose when we supposedly win? Small Comfort skewers its characters, slyly implicating the reader along the way.

A brilliantly original and thought-provoking collection from the author and translator of The Details, shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize.

She Who Remains, Rene Karabash, translated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel

High in the Accursed Mountains, in a village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekija escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most. Years later, as Bekija – now Matija – tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.

The Director, Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin

GW Pabst, one of cinema’s greatest, is perhaps the greatest director of his era. When the Nazis seized power, he was filming in France. To escape the horrors of the new Germany, he flees to Hollywood. But under the blinding California sun, the world-famous director suddenly looks like a nobody. Not even Greta Garbo, whom he made famous, can help him. And thus, almost through no fault of his own, he finds himself back in his homeland of Austria, which is now called Ostmark. The returning family is confronted with the barbaric nature of the regime. But Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin, wants the film genius; he won’t take no for an answer and makes big promises. While Pabst still believes that he will be able to resist these advances, that he will not submit to any dictatorship other than art, he has already taken the first steps into a hopeless entanglement.

On Earth As It Is Beneath, Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins. Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witnesses.

The Duke, Matteo Melchiorre, translated from the Italian by Antonella Lettieri

Outside Vallorgana, a tiny, isolated village high in the foothills of the Dolomites, the “Duke” lives in the villa of his aristocratic ancestors. The last in the centuries-old line of the Cimamontes, he spends his days on his land and absorbed in the family archive, tolerated, if gently ridiculed by the villagers who are his neighbours. When he finds out that the village big man is taking timber from his land, he has a decision to make. Will he stay in his glorious, cerebral isolation or will he honour his ancestral blood and take action against this affront?

Matteo Melchiorre’s portrait of the idiosyncratic character of the Duke and the world of Valorgana is a sweeping feat of literary imagination. With the pace, panorama and plot twists of a great 19th-century classic, the breathless story of the Duke’s ensuing feud unfolds, asking some big 21stcentury questions about our relationships with privilege, the past, the natural world and each other.

The Witch, Marie Ndiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump

Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mum was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes – but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.

Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach 12 years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.

Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.

Women Without Men, Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh

This internationally acclaimed masterpiece by one of Iran’s most important and influential writers traces the interwoven destinies of five women – including a wealthy middle-aged housewife, a sex worker and a schoolteacher – as they arrive by different paths to live together in an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran.

Drawing on recent Iranian history and transcendent elements of Islamic mysticism, Parsipur’s unforgettable novel sees women escaping strict confines of family and society. It is still as pertinent and discerning today as it was when travelling secretly from hand to hand upon its first publication in 1989.

The Wax Child, Olga Ravn, translated from the Dutch by Martin Aitken

It was a black night in the year 1620 when Christenze Krukow made the wax child, when she melted down beeswax and set it in the image of a small human. For days, she carried it tucked beneath her arm, shaping it with the warmth of her flesh, giving it life. She fashioned for it eyes and ears that cannot open, and yet – it watches and listens.

It looks on as Christenze is haunted by rumour, it hears what the people whisper. It sees how, in the candlelight, she gazes with love at her friends, and hears the things they say in the shadows. It knows pine forest, misty fjord and the crackle of the burning pyre. It observes the violence in men’s eyes and the cruelty of their laws. In time, it begins to understand that once a suspicion of witchcraft has taken hold, it can prove impossible to shake…

Based on an infamous 17th-century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater.

Taiwan Travelogue, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman – who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name – is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.