The International Booker Prize 2025 - Longlisted
The Book of Disappearance
Written by Ibtisam
Azem
Translated by Sinan
Antoon
Original language: Arabic
What if all the Palestinians in Israel
simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react?
These unsettling questions are posed in Ibtisam Azem’s powerfully imaginative
novel
Alaa is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of
being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland after the
Nakba. Ariel, Alaa’s neighbour and friend, is a liberal Zionist, critical of
the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza yet faithful to the project
of Israel. When he wakes up one morning to find that all Palestinians have
suddenly vanished, Ariel begins searching for clues to the secret of their
collective disappearance.
That search, and Ariel’s reactions to it, intimately
reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question. Between the
stories of Alaa and Ariel are the people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv – café patrons,
radio commentators, flower-cutters – against whose ordinary lives these
fissures and questions play out.
Spare yet evocative, intensely
intelligent in its interplay of perspectives, The Book of Disappearance – which was critically
acclaimed in its original Arabic edition – is an unforgettable glimpse into
contemporary Palestine as it grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss
of memory.
On the Calculation of
Volume I
Written by Solvej
Balle
Translated by Barbara
J. Haveland
Original language: Danish
In the first part of Solvej Balle’s epic
septology, Tara Selter has slipped out of time. Every morning, she wakes up to
the 18th of November
She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of
November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were
yesterday. She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand – the
grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song;
her husband’s surprise at seeing her return home unannounced.
But for everyone around her, this day is lived for
the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and
they do not believe her when she tries to explain.
As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she
can’t shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day,
there’s a way to escape.
On the Calculation of Volume I is
the first book of a planned septology. Five books have been published in Danish
so far, with translations underway in over 20 countries
There's a Monster Behind
the Door
Written by Gaëlle
Bélem
Translated by Karen
FleetwoodLaëtitia
Saint-Loubert
Original language: French
In 1980s’ Réunion, monsters lurk beneath
the surface of vibrant island life, ready to pounce at the slightest
disturbance
La Réunion in the 1980s: a place of high unemployment
and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. Here, a little girl makes
a bid for escape from her sadistic parents’ reign of terror and turns to school
for salvation.
The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A
bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that
their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own.
Rich in the history of the island’s
customs and superstition and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque
tale manages to satirise the very notion of freedom available in this French
territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead
you.
Solenoid
Written by Mircea
Cărtărescu
Translated by Sean
Cotter
Original language:
Romanian
Solenoid submerges us in the mundane
details of a diarist's life, and then spirals into a bizarre, existential
account of history, philosophy and mathematics
Grounded in the reality of communist Romania, the
novel grapples with frightening health care, the absurdities of the education
system and the struggles of family life, while investigating other universes
and forking paths.
In a surreal journey like no other, we
visit a tuberculosis preventorium, an anti-death protest movement, a society of
dream investigators and a minuscule world of dust mites living on a microscope
slide. Combining fiction and history with autobiography – the book is partly
based on Cărtărescu’s experiences as a teacher – Solenoid searches for
escape routes through the alternate dimensions of life and art, as various
monstrous realities erupt within the present.
Reservoir Bitches
Written by Dahlia
de la Cerda
Translated by Julia
SanchesHeather
Cleary
Original language: Spanish
Life’s a bitch. That’s why you’ve got to
rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth. A linked story collection
of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny fiction from Mexico
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, 13 Mexican
women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, cheat, cry and lie their
way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a
cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster
seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking
Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways
to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices.
At once social critique and black
comedy, Reservoir Bitches is
a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.
Small Boat
Written by Vincent
Delecroix
Translated by Helen
Stevenson
Original language: French
November 2021: an inflatable dinghy
carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the
deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen?
Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities
wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the
British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene,
all but two of the migrants had died.
The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the
events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she
refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should
she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind
these tragedies?
A shocking, moral tale of our
times, Small Boat reminds
us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.
Hunchback
Written by Saou
Ichikawa
Translated
by Polly
Barton
Original language: Japanese
A literary phenomenon in Japan, Hunchback
is an extraordinary and thrilling debut novel about sex, disability and power.
Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe
spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the
limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly,
she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer
reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response?
An indecent proposal…
Written by the first disabled author to
win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of
the most important Japanese novels of the 21st century, Hunchback is an
extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed
at humanity’s edge.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird
Written by Hiromi
Kawakami
Translated
by Asa
Yoneda
Original language: Japanese
An inventive and immersive speculative
novel about a future in which humans are nearing extinction – from the
bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of
extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the
observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from
cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and
light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of
these and other alien beings - but it is far from certain that connection,
love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering
new world.
Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is
at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a
meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.
Eurotrash
Written by Christian
Kracht
Translated
by Daniel
Bowles
Original language: German
A jaded writer takes his spiky mother and
her ill-gotten wealth on a road trip in this tragicomic and absurd
semi-autobiographical novel
Realising he and she are the very worst kind of
people, a middle-aged man embarks on a dubious road trip through Switzerland
with his 80-year-old mother, recently discharged from a mental institution.
Traversing the country in a hired cab, they attempt to give away the wealth she
has amassed from investing in the arms industry, but a fortune of such
immensity is surprisingly hard to squander. Haunted in different ways by the
figure of her father, an ardent supporter of Nazism, mother and son can no
longer avoid delving into the darkest truths about their past.
Eurotrash is
a bitterly funny, vertiginous mirror-cabinet of familial and historical
reckoning. The pair’s tragicomic quest is punctuated by the tenderness and
spite meted out between two people who cannot escape one another. Intensely
personal and unsparingly critical, Eurotrash is a disorientingly brilliant
novel by a writer at the pinnacle of his powers.
Publicado em Português
pela ELSINORE em 02-2025 com o título “Perfeições”
Perfection
Written by Vincenzo
Latronico
Translated
by Sophie
Hughes
Original language: Italian
A taut, spare sociological novel about
the emptiness of contemporary existence – scathing and affecting in equal
measure
Millennial expat couple Anna and Tom are living the
dream in Berlin, in a bright, affordable, plant-filled apartment. Their life as
young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual
experimentation and the city’s 24-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared
by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media.
But beyond the images, dissatisfaction
and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have
children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little
more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna,
Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism. Feeling
increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more
radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose
perennially beyond their grasp.
Heart Lamp
Written by Banu
Mushtaq
Translated
by Deepa
Bhasthi
Original language: Kannada
In 12 stories, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely
captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in
southern India
Published originally in the Kannada language between
1990 and 2023, praised for their dry and gentle humour, these portraits of
family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq’s years as a journalist and
lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women’s rights and protested all
forms of caste and religious oppression.
Written in a style at once witty, vivid,
colloquial, moving and excoriating, it’s in her characters – the sparky
children, the audacious grandmothers, the buffoonish maulvis and thug brothers,
the oft-hapless husbands, and the mothers above all, surviving their feelings
at great cost – that Mushtaq emerges as an astonishing writer and observer of
human nature, building disconcerting emotional heights out of a rich spoken
style. Her opus has garnered both censure from conservative quarters as well
India’s most prestigious literary awards; this is a collection sure to be read
for years to come.
On a Woman's Madness
Written by Astrid
Roemer
Translated
by Lucy
Scott
Original language: Dutch
This classic of queer literature – as
electrifying today as it was when it first appeared in 1982 – tells the story
of a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her choosing
When Noenka’s abusive husband of just nine days
refuses her request for divorce, she flees her hometown in Suriname, on South
America’s tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo.
Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance
and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s
expectations.
Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott,
Astrid Roemer’s classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial
literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and
star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we
inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the
prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed,
resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. ‘I’m Noenka,’ she responds
resolutely, ‘which means Never Again.’
A Leopard-Skin Hat
Written by Anne
Serre
Translated
by Mark
Hutchinson
Original language: French
The story of an intense friendship between
the narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound
psychological disorders
Hailed in Le Point as a ‘masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and
elegance’, A Leopard-Skin Hat may
be Anne Serre’s most moving novel yet.
A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a
strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the
narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Serre poignantly depicts the
bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a
relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel.
Written in the aftermath of the death of
the author’s little sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a
tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell, written in Anne
Serre’s signature style.
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