The Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for English-language fiction, has announced its nominees. The list features two debut authors among the 13 selected, and nine authors are being recognized for the first time.
The nominees include ‘Love Forms’ by Claire Adam, ‘The South’ by Tash Aw, ‘Universality’ by Natasha Brown, ‘One Boat’ by Jonathan Buckley, ‘Flashlight’ by Susan Choi, ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ by Kiran Desai (nominated 19 years after her previous book, ‘The Inheritance of Loss,’ won the Booker), ‘Audition’ by Katie Kitamura, ‘The Rest of Our Lives’ by Ben Markovits, ‘The Land in Winter’ by Andrew Miller, ‘Endling’ by Maria Reva, ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay, ‘Seascraper’ by Benjamin Wood, and ‘Misinterpretation’ by Ledia Xhoga.
The nominees were chosen from 153 books published in the UK and/or Ireland between October of last year and September of this year.
“The 13 novels transport readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate, and a small coastal town in Greece. They illuminate the lives of Koreans in post-colonial Japan, an Indian woman feeling homesick in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor in New York, a shrimp fisherman in northern England, a mother searching for a child given up for adoption in Venezuela, and even endangered snails in contemporary Ukraine,” states the description from the organization.
The Booker Prize jury includes Irish author Roddy Doyle, the first winner of the Booker to chair the panel, Nigerian writer Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, American actress, producer, and editor Sarah Jessica Parker, British writer Chris Power, and American author Kiley Reid.
The list features three titles from independent publisher Faber and marks the Booker debut for Fitzcarraldo Editions, which has been nominated 16 times for its international counterpart.
Indian author Kiran Desai is the only previously awarded Booker winner on the nominee list, while Malaysian author Tash Aw, who grew up in the UK and still resides there, earns his third nomination.
British author Andrew Miller and Hungarian-British author David Szalay are also previous Booker nominees.
‘Misinterpretation’ by New York-based Albanian author Ledia Xhoga and ‘Endling’ by Canadian Maria Reva are the only debut novels on the list.
Although none of the nominated books are yet published in Portugal, authors like Tash Aw (‘The Silk Factory,’ published by Difel in 2006, translated by Maria Isabel Veríssimo), Natasha Brown (‘Assembly,’ by Livros do Brasil in 2022, translated by Tânia Ganho), and Desai (‘The Inheritance of Loss,’ by Porto Editora in 2007, translated by Vera Falcão Martins) have works available in Portuguese editions.
Katie Kitamura’s work ‘Intimacies’ is translated by Tânia Ganho and published by Quetzal in 2022, as is British author Andrew Miller, available in Portugal since the 1990s with titles like ‘Ingenious Pain’ (‘A Dor Industriosa’) published by Teorema and translated by Telma Costa in 1999, and ‘Pure’ (‘A Cidade Impura’) by Presença in 2012, translated by Miguel Romeira.
David Szalay’s works, such as ‘All That Man Is’ (‘Tudo o que um homem é,’ in 2018, translated by Miguel Romeira, and ‘Turbulence’ in the following year, translated by Joana Neves), were published by Elsinore.
The finalists for this year’s Booker Prize will be announced on September 23, and the winner, who will receive a prize of £50,000 (57,700 euros), will be revealed on November 10.
