Novels from Asia, Europe and South America apply for the Booker International Prize Culture

From rural Argentina to communist East Germany, these novels depict people struggling against the forces of nature, history, or economics.

The prize winner will receive 50 thousand. check for pounds sterling (€58 thousand).

The short list of the prize this year included the novel “Not a River” by the Argentinian writer Selva Almada (Not a River) – a story about fishermen with a disturbing subtext; the book “Cairo” by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck is a doomed love story set in the last years of East Germany; and Brazilian writer Itamar Vieira Jr.’s story about farmers “Crooked Plow” (Crooked Plow).

In the book “Details” by the Swedish writer Ia Genberg (The Details), in Korean Hwang Sok-yong’s epic “Mater 2-10”, depicting the life of several generations, and Dutch writer Jente Posthuma’s saga about siblings “What Better Not to Think About” (What I’d Rather Not Think About) deals with human relationships.

“These books feel the weight of the past, but at the same time they speak to the current reality of racism and oppression, global violence and ecological catastrophe,” said Eleanor Wachtel, the presenter who chairs the judging panel.

The winner will be announced on May 21 at a ceremony in London.

The Booker International Prize is awarded annually to a book of fiction in any language translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. This prize is awarded alongside the main Booker Prize for English-language fiction.

The prize was created to highlight fiction in other languages, which makes up only a small proportion of books published in Britain, and to honor the under-appreciated work of literary translators. The prize is shared equally between the author and the translator.