The Man Booker International Prize has announced the shortlist for the 2016 literary award, which honors fiction in translation. Six novels are competing for the £50,000 ($70,000) prize, to be divided equally between author and translator. The nominated writers are Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk, Chinese dissident Yan Lianke, Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa, Austrian Robert Seethaler, South Korean Han Kang, and the literary world’s greatest recluse since J. D. Salinger, the Italian pseudonymous writer Elena Ferrante.
Boyd Tonkin, chair of the judging panel, comments “This exhilarating shortlist will take readers both around the globe and to every frontier of fiction… In setting, they range from a Mao-era re-education camp and a remote Alpine valley to the modern tumult and transformation of cities such as Naples and Istanbul. In form, the titles stretch from a delicate mosaic of linked lives in post-colonial Africa to a mesmerizing fable of domestic abuse and revolt in booming east Asia. Our selection shows that the finest books in translation extend the boundaries not just of our world – but of the art of fiction itself.” The winner will be announced on May 16th.
The 2016 Man Booker International Shortlist:
