A shortlist has been released for the International Booker Prize, honoring the "best novels and short story collections from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland." The winning book will be named May 20 in London, with the £50,000 (about $63,930) prize money divided equally between the author and translator. In addition, the shortlisted authors and translators each receive £2,500 (about $3,195). This year's shortlisted titles are:
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland (Danish)
Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson (French)
Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Asa Yoneda (Japanese)
Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes (Italian)
Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi (Kannada)
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson (French)
Chair of the judges Max Porter said: "This list is our celebration of fiction in translation as a vehicle for pressing and surprising conversations about humanity. These mind-expanding books ask what might be in store for us, or how we might mourn, worship or survive. They offer knotty, sometimes pessimistic, sometimes radically hopeful answers to these questions. Taken together they build a miraculous lens through which to view human experience, both the truly disturbing and the achingly beautiful. They are each highly specific windows onto a world, but they are all gorgeously universal."
International Booker Prize administrator Fiammetta Rocco added: "This veritable smorgasbord of a shortlist is for all those who look to books for emotional and intellectual sustenance. Though the books featured are slim, they will take up space in readers' minds long after they've finished. With all six books on the list published by independents for the first time, I'd like to thank the publishers for their ongoing commitment to bringing so many original and exciting international writers and translators to English-language readers. Their passion, along with that of the many booksellers and librarians championing global writing, has no doubt helped to fuel a very welcome boom in translated fiction in the U.K. and Ireland.'