International Booker Prize Longlist Released | Pawners Paper

The longlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize has been released. The list features the names of authors who merits the list alongside their wor

The longlist for the 2022 International Booker Prize has been released. The list features the names of authors who merits the list alongside their works.

 The International Booker Prize has been annually organized with the aim of celebrating the finest translated fiction from around the world, and as such, features for this year, four former winners, Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft, David Grossman and Jessica Cohen, as well as as three titles by Tilted Axis, a small press founded by another previous winner, Deborah Smith. Translator Anton Hur, a Seoul-based Swede, features twice.

The 13 longlisted novels, chosen from a record 135 submissions, are translated from 10 languages, including Hindi for the first time, and originate from 12 countries ( South Korea, twice; Denmark; Norway; Israel; France; Japan; Mexico; India; Indonesia; Argentina; Brazil; and Poland) across four continents.

The International Booker Prize 2022 Longlist

• Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from Korean by Anton Hur
• After The Sun by Jonas Eika, translated from Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg
• A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated from Norwegian by Damion Searls
• More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman, translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
• The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman, translated from French by Leslie Camhi
• Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Samuel Bett and David Boyd
• Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
• Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated from Korean by Anton Hur
• Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao
• Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
• Phenotypes by Paulo Scott, translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft

The longlist was selected by judges Merve Emre, Petina Gappah, Viv Groskop and Jeremy Tiang, chaired by Irish translator Frank Wynne. 

Frank Wynne commenting on the books says: 

“Borges famously believed that paradise would be ‘a kind of library’, and spending the past year in the company of some of the world’s great writers and their equally gifted translators has been a kind of heaven. —From the intimate to the epic, the numinous to the profane, the books make up a passionately-debated longlist that trace a ring around the world. These 13 titles from 12 countries and 10 languages explore the breadth and depth of human experience, and are a testament to the power of language and literature.”

The winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 will be awarded £50,000 prize, to be splitted evenly between author and translator. The shortlisted authors and translators will each receive £2,500, up from £1,000, bringing the total value of the prize to £80,000.

 The shortlist however, will be announced on April 7th at The London Book Fair and the winner on May 26th. Last year’s winner was At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis (Pushkin Press).