2019 Man Booker International Prize
The Man Booker International Prize was announced on May 21st. According to their website, this biannual prize is “recognizes one writer for his or her achievement in fiction. Worth £60,000, the prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.”
This award does a great job of highlighting books translated into English from around the world, as you can see in this year’s shortlist. I haven’t read any of these at this point, but I am very interested, especially in Celestial Bodies as I know very little about Oman!
Winner
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth
The author of Celestial Bodies, Jokha Alharthi first published this book in Arabic in 2010 under its original title, Ladies of the Moon. The Man Booker International synopsis says:
“Celestial Bodies is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society which is slowly redefining itself after the colonial era, to the crossroads of its complex present. Elegantly structured and taut, it tells of Oman’s coming-of-age through the prism of one family’s losses and loves.”
Other Short List Titles
The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alison Strayer
The Years, originally published in 2008, and had been described as Ernaux’s (brief) Remembrance of Things Past. The synopsis reads:
The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising, and news headlines. Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for ever-proliferating objects are given voice. The author’s voice continually dissolves and re-emerges as Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.
The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann translated from German by Jen Calleja
Published in German in 2017, this incredibly short book (180 pages in hardcover) was also shortlisted for the 2017 Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Award). Incidentally, the winner of the 2017 German Book Prize is The Capital, which is coming out in English next month. The synopsis of The Pine Islands reads:
When Gilbert Silvester, a journeyman lecturer on beard fashions in film, awakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees – immediately, irrationally, inexplicably – for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Basho. Suddenly, from Gilbert’s directionless crisis there emerges a purpose: a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the poet to see the moon rise over the pine islands of Matsushima. Falling into step with another pilgrim – a young Japanese student called Yosa, clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide – Gilbert travels across Basho’s disappearing Japan with Yosa, one in search of his perfect ending and the other the new beginning that will give his life meaning. The Pine Islands is a serene, playful, profoundly moving story of the transformations we seek and the ones we find along the way.
