International Booker reveals the 13 nominees that show that “the world is thinking”

The Booker International Prize revealed this Tuesday the 13 books nominated for this year's edition, in a selection that “shows that the world is thinking” , and which includes authors and translators of 15 nationalities.

Nominated for this edition of the award, which distinguishes a literary work translated into English, published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, are the Palestinian Ibtisam Azem, with The Book of Disappearance , the Danish Solvej Bale, with On the Calculation of Volume I , the French Gaëlle Bélem, with There's a Monster Behind the Door , the Romanian Mircea Cartarescu, with Solenoid , the Mexican Dahlia de la Cerda, with Reservoir Bitches , and the French Vincent Delecroix, with Small Boat .

They are joined by the Japanese Saou Ichikawa and Hiromi Kawakami, with, respectively, Hunchback and Under the Eye of the Big Bird , the Swiss Christian Kracht, with Eurotrash , the Italian Vincenzo Latronico, with Perfection , the Indian Banu Mushtaq, with Heart p, the Surinamese-Dutch Astrid Roemer, with On a Woman's Madness , and the French Anne Serre, with A Leopard-Skin Hat .

The 13 books – 11 novels and two short story collections – feature 13 authors making their International Booker Prize debut, many of whom are literary bestsellers and award winners in their home countries .

Among the translators of these works, there are three who have previously been included in the award's so-called longlist .

From sexual desire and disability to the nocturnal disappearance of the Palestinian people; from a tragedy in the English Channel to a 20th-century queer classic; from stories spanning thousands of years to a single day that repeats itself over and over, the shortlist is made up of books that are, in the words of Max Porter, president of the 2025 jury, “from everywhere, for everyone”.

“In these books, people share survival strategies, cheat, lie, joke and innovate . Some people no longer belong to this earth, or send visions from the future or from parallel universes. These books transport us to the agony of the family , the workplace or the politics of the nation-state, to the almost spiritual secret of friendship, to the inner architecture of erotic feeling, to the banality of capitalism and to the turmoil of faith,” said the president of the jury.

Max Porter also said that all the members of the jury — which also included author Caleb Femi, editor Sana Goyal, writer Anton Hur and singer-songwriter Beth Orton — were “amazed by the differences in reading ”.

The award's organization highlights that this is the edition with the largest number of independent publishers (11) and with the largest number of books presented by publishers (154), since the award was launched in its current format, in 2016.

The shortlist for the International Booker Prize will be revealed on 8 April , with the winner announced at a ceremony at Tate Modern in London on 20 May.

The six works that reach the final stage will receive a prize of £5,000, to be shared between the author and the translator. The winning book will receive a prize of £50,000, equally divided between the author and the translator.

The winner of the 2024 edition of the International Booker Prize was Kairos , by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann.