International Booker Prize 2023: 6 shortlisted books, and reasons why literary awards matter

The 2023 International Booker Prize shortlisted books. (Image source: Twitter/TheBookerPrize)

The International Booker Prize not only gives the winners a big platform but also puts a spotlight on other authors and masterpieces from the winning countries.

In 2013, Kannada writer U.R. Ananthamurthy was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize – the award was meant for a writer’s complete body of work instead of a single title back then. And, in 2022, Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (translated by Daisy Rockwell) was awarded the top honour. The excellent novel was originally composed in Hindi and published in 2018. Since the translation, however, both the writer and the translator have become household names in South Asian literature.

Tomb of Sand is a nearly 700-page saga that talks about the Partition of India and the bonds that are formed beyond the real – and unreal – boundaries in which authors, such as Saadat Hasan Manto and Intizar Hussain, make cameo appearances. Earlier this year, Pyre, which was written by the celebrated Tamil author Perumal Murugan (and translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan) was longlisted for the same prize along with a dozen other works, but it didn’t make it to the shortlist which was announced just a few hours ago.

The winning work will be announced in London on May 23. And the prize money (£50,000) will be shared equally between the writer and the translator.

The shortlist seems to be a spectacular collection that ranges in themes as complex and wide-reaching as motherhood and faith. Translated literature usually has a distinct flavour, as it strives to attach the feathers of one language to the body of another. It would have been impossible for Japanese novels, which are currently being ravenously consumed in the West, to break the language barrier without the smart minds of translators.

In India, too, some translators (examples: Arunava Sinha, Jerry Pinto) are getting their moment in the sun. But there’s still a long way to go since most works written in Indian languages aren’t getting translated. It will probably take many years to bridge that gap.

Other literary prizes

Apart from the International Booker and its older sibling, the Booker Prize, which is given to a work of fiction written in English and published in the UK or Ireland, voracious readers and critics also keep an eye on the Pulitzer Prize and the US National Book Awards (for literary fiction) and the Nebula Awards (for genre fiction). While the Nobel Prize in Literature is still considered the crème de la crème of the awards, it’s not the only yardstick that can be used to gauge the cultural impact created by an author as there are too many genres and languages out there.

But writers will certainly need all of these honors – and more – in order to be seen and heard. And we’ll also need them if we want to learn more about fictional adventures from different parts of the world (this year, the shortlist includes works from Bulgaria, Cote D'Ivoire, Spain, Guadeloupe, South Korea and Mexico). What else will enable us to drop their words and careful turns of phrase into romantic dates and political debates?