The International Booker Prize 2025 Longlist has been announced with thirteen titles of fiction translated into English.
The longlist is as follows:
- A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (translated by Mark Hutchison)
- On a Woman's Madness by Astrid Roemer (translated by Lucy Scott)
- Heat Lamp by Banu Mushtaq (translated by Deepa Bhasthi)
- Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes)
- Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (translated by Daniel Dowles)
- Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromo Kawakami (translated by Asa Yoneda)
- Hunchback by Saou Ichakawa (translated by Polly Barton)
- Small Bone by Vincent Delecroix (translated by Helen Stevenson)
- Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (translated by Julis Sanches, Heather Cleary)
- Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu (translated by Sean Colter)
- There's a Monster Behind the Door by Gaellle Belem (translated by Kareen Fleetwood, Laetitia Saint-Loubert)
- On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara J Haveland)
- The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem (translated by Sinan Antoon)
'Translated fiction is not an elite or rarefied cultural space requiring expert knowledge; it is the exact opposite. It is stories of every conceivable kind from everywhere, for everyone. It is a miraculous way in which we might meet one another in all our strangeness and sameness, and defy the borders erected between us...
‘In these books people are sharing strategies for survival; they are cheating, lying, joking and innovating. Some people are no longer of this earth, or they are sending visions from the future or from parallel universes. These books bring us into the agony of family, workplace or nation-state politics, the near-spiritual secrecy of friendship, the inner architecture of erotic feeling, the banality of capitalism and the agitations of faith.'
The prize awards £25,000 to the author and £25,000 to the translator, in recognition of the essential work of translators in bringing fiction to a wider audience. I need to read more translated fiction, so will be keen to investigate these titles further.
The shortlist of 6 titles will be announced on 8 April and the winner on 20 May 2025.