Six things you need to know about the International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist
As the International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist is announced, discover the most interesting facts and trends that have emerged in this year’s selection
Why you should read the International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist, according to our judges
We asked the International Booker Prize 2023 judges to explain what impressed and delighted them most about each book on this year’s shortlist – and why they are relevant to today’s world
The panel of judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani. The panel also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times. Here, they share their thoughts on the six books they have selected for the International Booker Prize 2023 shortlist.
Boulder
How would you summarise Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
Boulder is a vibrant love story between two women, exploring their relationship to the body and to sensuality, and the moment when the harmony of love breaks down. It’s a sumptuous exploration of desire, illuminated by inventive and dazzling images.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
It is a poet’s book. The style is sublime, the language bewitching and we are overwhelmed by certain metaphors, whose originality and sensuality sweep us away.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
Readers will be seduced by the sensuality of this book, by its sincerity. It is a book about appetite – in the most common sense of the word, since the narrator is a passionate cook – but also about the appetite for another’s body, for life and for freedom.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
This is a book where you feel very close to the narrator. You don’t leave her side for a second, you feel every emotion she describes, with an extraordinary poetic force.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
This is not a militant book. It is a love story between two women who each have a very different vision of motherhood. Two women who experience the same difficulties as any other couple and who question their desire for freedom.
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
The passages where the narrator cooks on the boat while thinking about the woman she loves. These are madly sensual descriptions!
Boulder by Eva Baltasar
Whale
How would you summarise Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
Whale is a rollercoaster adventure through Korean history and culture, a magical and grotesque epic about life and death, liberty and self-fulfilment, dried fish and bricks.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
It’s hard to think of a book that had such an abundance of imagination. The plot twists and turns and hurtles along in a way that makes you pleasantly dizzy; the imagery and language in the book are also so rich, with the innocence and darkness of a fairy-tale combined with a playful sense of irony. The translator Chi-Young Kim has done an amazing job, the translation is so dynamic and full of life.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
Alongside the whirlwind plot, probably the riotous sense of humour. This is real Rabelaisian stuff – grotesque bodies, violence, passion, decay and carnivalesque laughter. This makes the book very funny, but also deeply human.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
The characters have the power of archetypes – they’ll haunt your dreams. Geumbok, the protagonist, is an irrepressible entrepreneur and individualist, but with contradictions – she is sly and gullible, loving and violent, dedicated and treacherous. You can’t take your eyes off her. The story, however, really belongs to Chunhui, her daughter, who is a tragic saint and a survivor.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
It’s a story of a woman making her way in a hostile world, and that is always relevant. This is a story full of magic and humour, but there is also profound darkness and struggle, terrible violence and prejudice. Patriarchal society eventually forces Geumbok to become a man (in more ways than one!), but you won’t have seen these problems explored in quite the same magical, brutal, bodily way as they are here.
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
The book is packed with memorable moments and images, but the most memorable were the moving ones. One that sticks in the mind is when Chunhui, neglected, lonely and unable to speak, first has a conversation (in her imagination?) with a stuffed elephant, who then becomes her only friend… it’s absurd, but it will bring a tear to your eye.
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan
The Gospel According to the New World
How would you summarise The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
The novel tells the story of Pascal, the messiah of the New World, who will spread the word from one journey to another and from one community to another. A hymn to love, brotherhood and the fight against inequality.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
What is unique is the balance between a simple, uncluttered style, a classical form, and the immense ambition of the subject, since Maryse Condé is trying, no more and no less, to rewrite the Gospel and the life of Jesus.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
It is a book full of wisdom and love, written by an experienced author, who puts all her storytelling talent to good use. Readers will be charmed by the fluidity of the narrative, the beauty of the descriptions, but also by the extraordinary optimism, the faith, that emanates from this novel.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
We get very attached to the character of Pascal, this magnificent prophet who at the beginning is not aware that he has been chosen. It is precisely his innocence and even his naivety that make him such a touching character. Pascal is a messiah free of all dogmatism who fights racism, inequality and echoes the injustices of our world.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
Maryse Condé reminds us of the virtue of utopias: if we are not able to dream of a better world, we will not find the means to make it happen. Of course, we tend to mock messiahs, activists who present themselves as prophets - look at Greta Thunberg! - but we need them to defend the great causes of humanity.
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
The descriptions of nature, for example the one around the grandparents’ house. You can hear the sound of frogs; you can smell the flowers and the bark.
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé
Standing Heavy
How would you summarise Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
A fast-paced, poignant and funny take on Franco-African history and its complexities and problems interlaced with wry and surprising takes on current consumer culture, largely told through the lives of migrant workers employed to ‘stand heavy’ as retail security guards, who are often overlooked and yet themselves see everything.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
Although a debut, Standing Heavy brings an assured touch to negotiating a range of complex and longstanding. Issues in a refreshing, at times playful way that also draws on traditional French literary styles.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
It’s humour and humanity in the face of difficult subjects.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
The main characters - Andre, Ferdinand, Ossiri and Kassoum - belong to different generations of undocumented workers. As we follow them we see how the migrant experience has evolved, from the initially more optimistic and easy-going 1960s to more harder-edged, xenophobic and suspicious times today. While their experiences, and fates, differ they collectively bring a lively, often razor-sharp, perspective on France and its recent history as well as more broadly the state of capitalism that will leave many readers nodding and laughing along, perhaps even feeling they’ve taken the words right out of their mouths.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
Standing Heavy is highly relevant for our times as societies in many parts of the world grapple with the problems of capitalism, inequality, racism and the legacies and open wounds of history. Yet the book has its feet firmly on the ground as we see how power manifests itself in many small, often very ordinary ways. The style of storytelling forces us to see our own everyday realities through different eyes.
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
The ending, which is very poignant and - without giving too much away - underscores the phenomenon of invisible people in our midst.
Standing Heavy by Gauz’
Time Shelter
How would you summarise Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
An inventive, subversive and morbidly humorous novel about national identities and the seductive dangers of memory and nostalgia.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
The premise of the ‘time shelters’ – rooms in clinics where the past is recreated with painstaking accuracy in order to treat sufferers of Alzheimer’s. Very soon even healthy people are trying to be admitted to these time shelters, to escape from the present and find solace in the past.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
The wit and inventiveness of the writing, which never overwhelms the compassion the author has not only for his characters, but also for us, the readers.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
The unnamed narrator, who is the assistant to Gaustine, the man setting up these ‘time shelters’. He is hapless and lost, but loyal to Gaustine. He is a man who understands the attractions of the beautiful haze of the past, but he is also a realist who knows that we can only live in the sunlight of the present.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
It compels us to question our concepts of identity: not just national, individual, societal, but also historical and temporal. How much do we reshape the past to suit our present and our future? In addition to the borders dividing countries, we see that time and memory are also different forms of borders. How do individuals, nations, even continents, decide on what to remember, and what to forget? The novel also makes us contemplate the very concept of Time itself in a different way. Nostalgia is more than what it used to be.
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
There are a number of moments. When you mess around with time, time also messes with you. As it’s an intricately constructed novel, each element tightly connected to the next, and we don’t want to ruin it for anyone, all we’ll say is, ‘Read the book!’
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
Still Born
How would you summarise Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey, in a sentence to encourage readers to pick it up?
This novel – taking on the knottiest questions about agency, motherhood, the precariousness of the body – exerts a magnetic force; the choices and fates of its characters feel as real as life.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
This novel is written very close to the bone, for which we have Rosalind Harvey’s superb translation to thank. There is rare propulsion to the plot (for literary fiction) that arises not from any strained special effect but from our investment in the characters and its evocation of the ordinary yet life-altering choices they –and we – must make. One is pinned to the page.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but love?
Nettel has created rich, flawed, searching characters and allows such access to them – their minds, desires, contradictions. In part, her book is about the very closeness and intimacy it enacts.
Can you tell us about any particular characters that readers might connect with, and why?
The friendship at heart of the novel – between Alina and Laura – will resonate deeply. Nettel renders their bond in all its richness and complexity.
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
The book is written in such a direct, unornamented style and the characters and their predicaments feel so universal that one could, in fact, be forgiven for forgetting this book was fiction. Its concerns are very timely: what does it mean to have true agency over one’s body or life; what does caretaking entail; where do we draw the borders of our bodies and our families?
Is there one specific moment in the book that has stuck in your mind and, if so, why?
The final page. There are some scraps of dialogue, and Alina utters a very ordinary phrase, a cliché. But, for the reader, having hurtled through the story and all its convolutions, having seen all that remains hidden in the private lives of these characters, that line lands with prismatic power. Simple and devastating. What an ending.
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel
