International Booker Prize 2024: Shortlist announced

The shortlist for the International Booker Prize is finally here, celebrating some of the very best works of literature that were originally written in a language other than English.

This year's contenders represent six languages (Dutch, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish) across six countries (Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea and Sweden) and three continents (Asia, Europe and South America).

• Meet the Kirklands, the creative couple getting people reading classic literature

• Do polyglots process all foreign languages in the brain the same as their mother tongue? Not exactly

They include Jenny Epenbeck, the first German author to be shortlisted since 2020, for her novel 'Kairos', and Portuguese author Itamar Vieira junior, for his debut novel 'Crooked Plow'.

Argentina is represented for a fourth time in the past five years with Selva Almada's 'Not a River', while it's also the third year in which a South Korean author has been shortlisted; 81-year-old Hwang Sok-yong for his ninth English-translated novel: 'Mater 2-10'.

Whittled down from a longlist of 13 titles, which were announced in March, the final six were chosen by a 2024 judging panel, chaired by writer and broadcaster Eleanor Wachte.

The judges include award-winning poet Natalie Diaz; Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera; visual artist William Kentridge and writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.

"Our shortlist, while implicitly optimistic, engages with current realities of racism and oppression, global violence and ecological disaster," said Wachtel in a statement.

"From Selva Almada’s economical evocation of foreboding and danger in a remote corner of Argentina, 'Not a River', to 'Kairos', Jenny Erpenbeck’s intense, rich drama about the entanglement of personal and national transformations during the dying years of East Germany, words have the power to make connections and inhabit other sensibilities – to illuminate," she continued.

"The books cast a forensic eye on divided families and divided societies, revisiting pasts both recent and distant to help make sense of the present," International Booker Prize Administrator Fiammetta Rocco added.

The prize honours the vital work of translators, offering a £50,000 (€58,362) prize that's divided equally between the winning author and their translator/s. Each of the shortlisted nominees that don't win will still receive £2,500 (€2,918) each.

The full shortlist:

'Not a River' by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott

Three men go on a fishing trip, following a tragic incident in the same spot years earlier. As the day unravels, a strange and shocking thing occurs that forces the friends to confront traumas of the past; a story soaked in themes of guilt, desire and masculinity against a leering sense of doom.

"'Not A River' moves like water, in currents of dream and overlaps of time which shape the stories and memories of its protagonists," the Booker Jury said.

'Kairos' by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann

A tumultuous love story told to the backdrop of 1986 Berlin, a young woman meets an older, married man on a bus. They begin an intense and passionate affair - until she sleeps with someone else for one night, the resulting emotional fissures echoing the collapse of East Germany.

"Kairos is a bracing philosophical inquiry into time, choice, and the forces of history," the Booker Jury said.

'The Details' by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson

Genberg began writing this book just as the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, the swirling anxieties and impending isolation stirring a rush of emotions that are woven throughout this story.

In a fevered state, a broadcaster is consumed by loss, love and longing as she navigates connections both past and present. "Ia Genberg writes with a remarkably sharp eye about a series of messy relationships between friends, family and lovers," the Booker Jury said.

'Mater 2-10' by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae

A vivid depiction of the lives of ordinary working class Koreans, Hwang Sok-yong takes us on a journey through a complicated cultural history; "from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century," the Booker Jury stated.

'What I’d Rather Not Think About' by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey

"A deeply moving exploration of grief and identity through the lives of twins, one of whom dies by suicide," the Booker Jury said.

At the heart of Harvey's novel is a simple question: what would you do if you were a twin and lost your other half? A soul-sinking concept that meditates on suicide and searching for a new self in the aftermath.

'Crooked Plow' by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz

A tale of two Brazilian sisters, Bibiana and Belonisía, who inherit an ancient knife that binds them together forever.

"An aching yet tender story of our origins of violence, of how we spend our lives trying to bloom love and care from them, and of the language and silence we need to fuel our tending," the Booker Jury said.

The International Booker Prize 2024 ceremony will take place on 21 May at London’s Tate Modern.