The International Booker Prize has announced its list of books for 2022. The International Booker Prize is awarded to one book that has been translated into English and published in Ireland and the United Kingdom. This prize aims to encourage the publishing and reading of more international works. The prize is 50,000 pounds and it is divided between the translator and the winning author. The winner will be announced on May 26th in London. In this article, we are going to read about shortlisted books for International Booker Prize 2022.
Shortlisted Books for International Booker Prize 2022:
A New Name – Jon Fosse (Translator – Damion Searls)
Asle is a widower and an aging painter who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. His only friends are his neighbour a gallerist named Beyer and Asleik, a traditional fisherman farmer. In Bjorgvin, lives another Asle who also happens to be a painter but he is all alone and alcoholic. Both Isles are doppelgangers – exactly two versions of the same person and struggling with existential questions. What will happen with their existence?
Heaven – Mieko Kawakami (Translator – Sam Bett and David Boyd)
Kawakami’s novel is narrated in the voice of a fourteen old year student who was subjected to persistent suffering for having a lazy eye. But instead of resisting, the boy decides to suffer in complete resignation. The only individual who is aware of what he is going through is one of his female classmates who also suffer from similar treatment from her tormentors. This simple yet profound book stands as a sparkling testament to her literary talent. Kawakami is certainly one of the best young writers and she is working hard on expanding the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.
Elena Knows – Claudia Piñeiro (Translator – Frances Riddle)
Elena Knows is Piñeiro’s third novel – a unique story that interweaves personal tales of morality and looks for individual freedom with crime fiction. After Rita is found dead in the bell tower of the Church that she used to go to, the official investigation of the incident is rapidly closed. Her sick mother is the only person who is still determined about finding the culprit. Chronicling a hard journey across the suburbs of the city, an old liability, and an enlightening conversation, Elena Knows discloses the secrets of its characters and the concealed facets of hypocrisy and authoritarianism in our society.
Cursed Bunny – Bora Chung (Translator – Anton Hur)
Fading the lines between horror, science fiction, and magical realism, Bora Chung utilizes elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the original and authentic cruelties and horrors of capitalism, womanhood, gaslighting, patriarchy, and others in modern society. The images portrayed through Chung’s words are jarring but that is what makes this worth reading.
Tomb of Sand – Geetanjali Shree (Translator – Daisy Rockwell)
An 80-year-old woman drowns deeply in depression after the demise of her husband. Then she gets a grip to gain a new lease on life. She was determined to live a good life and beyond convention – she became friends with a trans woman. She confuses her bohemian daughter, who had the thinking of being the ‘modern’ one among the two. At her insistence, they travel back to Pakistan and simultaneously confront her teenage trauma of partition, and re-evaluate herself as a woman, daughter, mother, and a feminist. With the depth of the storyline, it might have the impression of an earnest book, but the tone is rather playful which makes it more funny, engaging, and original.
The Books of Jacob – Olga Tokarczuk (Translator – Jennifer Croft)
In the mid 18th century with the arrival of new notions on the continent, a young Jew of unfamiliar origins arrives in a village in Poland. Soon enough, he not changed his name but also his personality. Visited by what seems like some ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank’s charm casts a charismatic spell that manage to draw an increasingly ardent following. In the coming decades, Frank will cross the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires with a mass of followers in his thrall as reinvents himself over and over again, with the conversion of different religions. The real historical story of Frank around whom rumours and scandals swirl to this day is certainly a great topic to write about and read.
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