The Man Booker International Prize panel has announced the longlist for the 2021 Man Booker International Prize. This year’s longlist features thirteen of the books, and two out of the longlisted books are by African authors. The longlisted books by African authors are At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated from French by Anna Mocschovakis, Pushkin Press, and The Perfect Nine: The Epic Gikuyu and Mumbi by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, translated from Gikuyu by the author, VINTAGE, Harvill Secker.
The Man Booker International Prize is awarded for a single book (novels and short story collections), which is translated into English and published in the UK every year. The work of translators is equally rewarded, with the £50,000 prize divided between the author and the translator of the winning entry. Each shortlisted author and translator will also receive £1,000 each. Previous African writers on the prize are Fiston Mwanza Mujila and José Eduardo Agualusa
The chair of judges, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, says: ‘In a year when we could scarcely leave our own houses, we judges have been crossing continents, transported by our reading. Every book we’ve read is unique. However a theme does emerge – migration, the pain of it, but also the fruitful interconnectedness of the modern world…Not all writers stay in their native countries. Many do, and write wonderful fiction about their hometowns. But our longlist includes a Czech/Polish author’s vision of a drug-fuelled Swedish underworld, a Dutch author from Chile writing in Spanish about German and Danish scientists, and a Senegalese author writing from France about Africans fighting in a European war.’
The shortlist for the prize will be announced on 22 April 2021, and the winner announced on June 2, 2021 in a virtual celebration from Coventry, City of Culture .
See other longlisted writers here.
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