The Man Booker has joined forces with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and is awarded annually on the basis of a single book. Each year a £50,000 prize is divided equally between the author of the winning book and its translator, and the Man Booker International Prize Longlist for 2016 has now been announced.
From the 155 books that the judges consider, there are thirteen in the longlist. On 14th April the judges will announce a shortlist of just six books and from here the winner will be announced on 16th May.
Here are this year’s longlisted books:
A General Theory of Oblivion
Author – Jose Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)
Translator – Daniel Hahn
“A General Theory of Oblivion is a perfectly crafted, wild patchwork of a novel, playing on a love of storytelling and fable.”
A General Theory of Oblivion US
A General Theory of Oblivion UK
The Story of the Lost Child
Author – Elena Ferrante (Italy)
Translator – Ann Goldstein
The Story of the Lost Child is the final novel in the quartet of Neapolitan novels
The Story of the Lost Child US
The Story of the Lost Child UK
The Vegetarian
Author – Han Kang (South Korea)
Translator – Deborah Smith
The Vegetarian is a beautiful, unsettling novel about rebellion and taboo, violence and eroticism, and the twisting metamorphosis of a soul
Mend the Living
Author – Maylis de Kerangal (France)
Translator – Jessica Moore
Mend the Living is the story of a heart transplant, centred around Simon Limbeau, the boy whose heart is given, and his family.
Man Tiger
Author – Eka Kurniawan (Indonesia)
Translator – Labodalih Sembiring
A wry, affecting tale set in a small town on the Indonesian coast, Man Tiger tells the story of two interlinked and tormented families
The Four Books
Author – Yan Lianke (China)
Translator – Carlos Rojas
The Four Books is a powerful, daring novel of the dog-eat-dog psychology inside a labor camp for intellectuals during Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Tram 83
Author – Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo)
Translator – Roland Glasser
Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as, it is comic and colourfully exotic.
A Cup of Rage
Author – Raduan Nassar (Brazil)
Translator – Stefan Tobler
A Cup of Rage is a book of eroticism, vitriolic insults, cruelty and warring egos, and a sexual adventure turns into a savage power game
Ladivine
Author – Marie NDiaye (France)
Translator – Jordan Stump
Ladivine, from acclaimed author NDiaye is said to be a masterpiece of narrative ingenuity and emotional extremes
Death by Water
Author – Kenzaburo Oe (Japan)
Translator – Deborah Boliner Boem
Death by Water is an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today
White Hunger
Author – Aki Ollikainen (Finland)
Translator – Emily & Fleur Jeremiah
White Hunger is a novella set in 1867: a year of devastating famine in Finland
A Strangeness in My Mind
Author – Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
Translator – Ekin Oklap
A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, a brilliant tableau of life among the newcomers who have changed the face of Istanbul over the past fifty years.
A Whole Life
Author – Robert Seethaler (Austria)
Translator – Charlotte Collins
As the title says, A Whole Life follows the story of one man, trials, tribulations, and why a simple life is not so bad.
So there are all thirteen longlisted books, selected by a panel of five judges. We’ll bring you more news later in the year. Good luck to all the longlisted authors!
George Orwell commemorated with new coin
Canadian Writer Alice Munro, dies at 92
Birmingham Poet, Benjamin Zephaniah dies, aged 65
