The longlist for the Man Booker International prize was announced on Monday, March 12. The list of 13 titles includes past winners of the $50,000 prize, Korean novelist Han Kang, who won in 2016 for The Vegetarian, and Hungarian novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai, who won in 2015. This year, they are in running for the The White Book, translated once again by Deborah Smith, and The World Goes On, translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirte, respectively.
The longlist, which was narrowed down from 108 books under consideration, also features Austrian author Christoph Ransmayr’s The Flying Mountain, a novel in verse translated by Simon Pare and published by Seagull Books.
Founded in 2006, the Man Booker International prize was initially awarded to a living author for a body of work available in English, but since 2015 has been given to a single fiction title, translated into English. The cash prize is shared equally between the writer and the translator.
This year’s longlist features books originally written in ten different languages, and includes authors from France, Iraq, Spain and Taiwan. One of the translators, Frank Wynne, has been nominated for two separate translations, from French and from Spanish. The 13 titles on the longlist are:
- The 7th Function of Language by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (France, Chatto)
- The Impostor by Javier Cercas, translated by Frank Wynne (Spain, MacLehose Press)
- Vernon Subutex 1 by Virginie Despentes, translated by Frank Wynne (France, MacLehose Press)
- Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky (Germany, Portobello Books)
- The White Book by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (South Korea, Portobello Books)
- Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz, translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina Orloff (Argentina, Charco Press)
- The World Goes On by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes (Hungary, Tuskar Rock Press)
- Like a Fading Shadow by Antonio Muñoz Molina, translated by Camilo A Ramirez (Spain, Tuskar Rock Press)
- The Flying Mountain by Christoph Ransmayr, translated by Simon Pare (Austria, Seagull Books)
- Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright (Iraq, Oneworld)
- Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft (Poland, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
- The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi, translated by Darryl Sterk (Taiwan, Text Publishing)
- The Dinner Guest by Gabriela Ybarra, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Spain, Harvill Secker)
The shortlist will be announced by the jury on April 12. The winner will be revealed on May 22.
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