Books

International Booker Prize: former winners and first-timers on shortlist

Works translated from Korean, Norwegian, Japanese, Spanish, Polish and, a first, Hindi

The shortlist: Bora Chung, Jon Fosse, Mieko Kawakami, Claudia Piñeiro, Geetanjali Shree, and Olga Tokarczuk

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Martin Doyle
Thu Apr 7 2022 - 11:24

Frank Wynne, the Sligo-born chair of the judges for the 2022 International Booker Prize, who turns 60 today, said that the six books on this year’s shortlist were the best present he could have hoped for.

Translated from six different languages – Korean, Norwegian, Japanese, Spanish, Polish and, for the first time, Hindi – the shortlisted titles are by authors who include both former winners, Olga Tokarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft, and a writer, Geetanjali Shree, translated for the first time into English, by Daisy Rockwell.

The £50,000 prize for the finest fiction from around the world, translated into English, is split evenly between author and translator. While five of the original authors are female, a majority of the translators are male. The shortlist is again dominated by independent publishers, with two new ones this year, Tilted Axis and Honford Star.

The shortlist
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur from Korean (Honford Star)
A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls from Norwegian (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd from Japanese (Picador)
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle from Spanish (Charco Press)
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell from Hindi (Titled Axis Press)
The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft from Polish (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

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“Translation is an intimate, intricate dance that crosses borders, cultures and languages,” Wynne said. “There is little to compare to the awe and exhilaration of discovering a perfect pairing of writer and translator. As a jury we have had the pleasure of reading many extraordinary books, and choosing a shortlist from among them has been difficult and sometimes heart-breaking.

“These six titles from six languages explore the borders and boundaries of human experience, whether haunting and surreal, poignant and tender, or exuberant and capricious. In their differences, they offer glimpses of literature from around the world, but they all share a fierce and breathtaking originality that is a testament to the endless inventiveness of fiction.”

Wynne, an award-winning translator himself, said he was thrilled that the shortlist featured six countries and six languages but “that wasn’t the plan, you don’t go in thinking, what would a good shortlist look like? It’s just the six books we felt most passionately about.”

His fellow judges are author and academic Merve Emre; writer and lawyer Petina Gappah; writer, comedian and presenter Viv Groskop; and translator and author Jeremy Tiang.

Praising the extraordinary inventiveness of the authors and the many ways they found of telling a story, Wynne highlighted that Cursed Bunny was a series of short stories or fables; how each section of A New Name was a single sentence; Elena Knows drew on the light and shade of noir; The Book of Jacob was vast and sweeping, “like the Bayeux tapestry but a mile and a half longer”; and Heaven intense and claustrophobic;

While he acknowledged a common thread of trauma and conflict in the works, he insisted: “There is a great optimism, though, in the face of death, or loss of faith. It is not so much thay they are about trauma but about surviving trauma.”

He cautioned that the works should be appreciated as works of art, not primers for the cultures from which they sprang. “The purpose of literature is not a sort of crib for the culture, pretty snapshots to explain the world,” he said. “Not every Spanish novel is about the civil war; not every Argentinian novel is about the Black Decade. Jon Fosse writes about love, death, the desire to create – there are no fjords!

The 2022 International Booker Prize winner will be announced on May 26th at a ceremony in London. Last year’s winner was At Night All Blood Is Black, written by David Diop and translated by Anna Moschovakis.

2022 International Booker Prize shortlist


Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur from Korean (Honford Star)
While the stories in Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung blend elements of horror, fantasy and the surreal, each is viscerally rooted in the real fears and pressures of everyday life. Chung's richly imaginative collection is translated with verve and evident relish by Anton Hur, who shifts effortlessly from playful to harrowing.

Bora Chung was born in Seoul in 1976. She has written three novels and three collections of short stories. She has an MA in Russian and East European area studies from Yale University and a PhD in Slavic literature from Indiana University. She teaches Russian language and literature and science fiction studies at Yonsei University and translates modern literary works from Russian and Polish into Korean.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm in 1981. His pen name is inspired by AS Byatt, whose novel Possession inspired him. He has translated Man Asia Literary Prize-winner Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and Violets, International Booker Prize-longlisted Hwang Sok-yong’s The Prisoner and others. He lives in Seoul.

A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, Translated by Damion Searls from Norwegian (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
A New Name, the final movement in Jon Fosse's monumental Septology, draws together art, death, and the idea of God with a vast, gentle grace. Damion Searls' translation unfurls Fosse's slow sentence with immense precision and beauty.

Jon Fosse was born in 1959 on the west coast of Norway and has written over 30 books and 28 plays that have been translated into over 40 languages. His first novel, Red, Black, was published in 1983, and was followed by such works as Melancholia I & II, Aliss at the Fire, and Morning and Evening. He is one of the world’s most produced living playwrights. The Other Name: Septology I-II was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020. Fosse currently has homes in Bergen, Oslo, and in Hainburg, Austria.

Damion Searls was born in New York City in 1971 and lives in Minneapolis. He is a translator from German, French, Norwegian and Dutch, and a writer in English. He was longlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize with Jon Fosse, for The Other Name: Septology I-II.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, Translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd from Japanese (Picador)
An intense, claustrophobic novel, Heaven uses its tale of middle-school bullying to enact Nietzsche's critique of morality. The power of Sam Bett and David Boyd's translation lies in its ability to communicate both Mieko Kawakami's abstract, philosophical ideas and her harrowing human drama.

Mieko Kawakami was born in Osaka in 1976. She is the author of the internationally bestselling novel, Breasts and Eggs. She made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, in 2007. She lives in Tokyo.

Sam Bett is a writer and Japanese translator. He has translated fiction by Yoko Ogawa, NISIOISIN and Keigo Higashino as well as essays by Banana Yoshimoto, Haruomi Hosono and Toshiyuki Horie. He lives in Portland, Maine.

David Boyd is assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has translated novels and stories by Hiroko Oyamada, Masatsugu Ono and Toh EnJoe, among others.

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle from Spanish (Charco Press)
Elena Knows, Claudia Piñeiro's short and deeply felt novel, evokes the loneliness of ageing and the uncertainty of memory. Frances Riddle's brutal yet sparing translation suggests the shadows and light of noir without ever eclipsing the very human tragedy at the core of the book.

Piñeiro, born in Argentina in 1960, is best known for her crime novels which are bestsellers in Latin America. ‘The Hitchcock of the River Plate’, many of her novels have been adapted for the big screen. Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinean author, after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. More recently, Piñeiro has become a very active figure in the fight for the legalisation of abortion in Argentina and for the legal recognition of writers as workers.

Frances Riddle was born in Raleigh, North Carolina and lives in Buenos Aires, where she works as a translator, writer, and editor. This is her fourth title for Charco Press after Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (2017), The German Room by Carla Maliandi (2018) and Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic (2020).

Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell from Hindi (Titled Axis Press)
The constantly shifting perspectives and timeframes of Geetanjali Shree's inventive, energetic Tomb of Sand lead us into every cranny of an 80-year-old woman's life and surprising past. Daisy Rockwell's spirited translation rises admirably to the complexity of the text, which is full of word play and verve. A loud and irresistible novel.

Author of three novels and several story collections, Geetanjali Shree’s work has been translated into English, French, German, Serbian, and Korean. She was born in Mainpuri, India, in 1957. This is the first of her books to be published in the UK. She lives in New Delhi.

Daisy Rockwell is a painter, writer and translator living in Vermont, US. She was born in 1969 in Massachusetts. She has translated a number of classic works of Hindi and Urdu literature, including Upendranath Ashk’s Falling Walls, Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard.

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft from Polish (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob weaves an epic tapestry from the bizarre, mundane, and utterly unpredictable sweep of history as it is created moment by moment, crammed with a staggering cast of characters, places and historical events. Jennifer Croft's lithe, elegant translation nimbly conveys the novel's delicate irony and its ethereal beauty.

Olga Tokarczuk is the author of nine novels, three short story collections and has been translated into 30 languages. Her novel Flights won the 2018 International Booker Prize, in Jennifer Croft’s translation. In 2019, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Sulechow, Poland in 1962 and lives in Wroclaw.

Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, and National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize. She is a founding editor of The Buenos Aires Review. In 2018 she won the International Booker Prize for her translation of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. She was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma in 1981 and lives in Los Angeles.