Ivorian author, journalist, screenwriter and photographer, GauZ’, spots the 2023 International Booker Prize for his novel Standing Heavy, amongst a list of 13 fantastic titles.
Translated to English by Frank Wynne, the novel follows immigrants from Côte d’Ivoire as they navigate France. The judges describe it as “sharply satirical yet poignant” and a “witty deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption.”
Other books vying for the prize include:
Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.
A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson, translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley.
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey.
Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier, translated from French by Daniel Levin Becker.
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov, translated from Russian by Reuben Woolle.
Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund.
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated from French by Richard Philcox.
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim.
Boulder by by Eva Baltasar, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches.
While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer, translated from German by Katy Derbyshire.
The judges praise the list as a “celebration of the power of language and of authors who wanted to push formal enquiry as far as possible. We wanted to celebrate literary ambition, panache, originality and of course, through this, the talent of translators who have been able to convey all of this with great skill.” Chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani, the panel of judges also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times. Together, they will whittle the longlist to a shortlist of six books which will be unveiled on Tuesday, April 18. The winner will be announced on May 23, 2023.
Founded in 2004, the prize was introduced to complement the Man Booker Prize. Annually, it is awarded to a single book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator. Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, won the prize last year.
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