#InternationalBooker2024: the official shortlist

The official shortlist for this year’s International Booker Prize was announced yesterday:

• Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott (Charco Press)
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann (Granta Books)
• The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (Wildfire Books)
• Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae (Scribe UK)
• What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey (Scribe UK)
• Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (Verso Fiction)

I am still working through the longlist myself, so I don’t have a final opinion yet. But I am sure that at least three of these (Not a River, Kairos and Crooked Plow) will end up on my own personal shortlist. On the other hand, Mater 2-10 struggles to hold my attention whenever I try to read it. Different books for different readers, I guess.

The Shadow Panel will be revealing our own shortlist in a couple of weeks.