The majority of the books nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize, the prestigious award for fiction translated into English, are under 200 pages long.
Only one is over 300 pages: Mircea Cartarescu’s 627-page “Solenoid,” translated by Sean Cotter. It is also one of the most high-profile novels on the list.
Many literary critics have long touted Cartarescu as a potential Nobel Prize laureate, and the Romanian author’s nominated tome concerns a schoolteacher reflecting on his life, family and disturbing dreams.
The other titles, announced by the prize organizers in London on Tuesday, include Saou Ichikawa’s 100-page “Hunchback,” translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, about the sexual desires of a disabled care home resident, and Solvej Balle’s 169-page “On the Calculation of Volume I,” translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, in which an antiquarian book dealer relives the same day over and again.
Max Porter, the chair of this year’s judging panel, said in an interview that the selection of so many short books didn’t reflect a “much-prophesied loss of attention span” among readers. The 13 titles were simply the best the panel had read, he added.
Some book award judges gravitate toward long novels, he added, thinking that writing longer is harder, but finessing a short novel was an equal challenge. “Some of these books don’t have a wasted word,” Porter said.
Established in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally awarded to an author for their entire body of work. Since 2016, it has been given to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland during the previous 12 months.
Last year’s prize went to Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Kairos” translated by Michael Hofmann, and previous winners have included Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” and Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights.”
The award comes with prize money of 50,000 pounds, or about $63,000, which the winning author and translator share equally.
This year’s other nominees include Ibtisam Azem’s “The Book of Disappearance,” translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, which imagines a day in Tel Aviv when Israelis awake to find all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished; and Astrid Roemer’s “On a Woman’s Madness,” about a woman who abandons an abusive marriage and has a series of affairs, including one with a woman. Originally published in the Netherlands in 1982, “On a Woman’s Madness” was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Awards. It was translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott.
The judges will now cut the list down to six nominees, scheduled to be announced on April 8. The winner will revealed during a ceremony at Tate Modern, in London, on May 20.
The full list of nominees is:
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“The Book of Disappearance” by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon
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“On the Calculation of Volume I” by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
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“There’s a Monster Behind the Door,” by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
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“Solenoid” by Mircea Cartarescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter
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“Reservoir Bitches” by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary
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“Small Boat” by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson
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“Hunchback” by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton from Japanese
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“Under the Eye of the Big Bird,” by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda
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“Eurotrash” by Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles from German
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“Perfection” by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes
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“Heart Lamp” by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi from Kannada
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“On a Woman’s Madness” by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott
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“A Leopard-Skin Hat” by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson