Man Booker International Prize shortlist announced

Six books were shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize on last week the New York Times reported.

The international prize celebrates works translated into English and published in Britain, and comes with a cash award of £50,000, or about $64,000, which authors split with their translators.

It is distinct from the Man Booker Prize, which goes to works originally published in English.

The nominees are:

• The French author Mathias Énard’s “Compass,” which centers on the memories and reveries of an insomniac music scholar (translated by Charlotte Mandell).

• The Israeli author David Grossman’s “A Horse Walks Into a Bar,” about a comedian who dissolves in front of an audience’s eyes at a provincial Israeli nightclub (translated by Jessica Cohen).

• The Norwegian author Roy Jacobsen’s “The Unseen,” about a family living on a small Scandinavian fishing island (translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw).

• The Danish author Dorthe Nors’s “Mirror, Shoulder, Signal,” about a middle-aged woman’s attempts to learn to drive (translated by Misha Hoekstra).

• The Israeli author Amos Oz’s “Judas,” a coming-of-age story set in mid-20th-century Jerusalem (translated by Nicholas de Lange)

 The Argentine author Samanta Schweblin’s “Fever Dream,” which opens with a woman on her deathbed at a clinic in rural Argentina, then slowly reveals how she got there (translated by Megan McDowell).

“Every single one of these six books could win,” Nick Barley, the chairman of the prize’s judging panel, said at a news media briefing in London on Thursday.

In 2015, the Booker Prize Foundation revamped the international prize to make it for a specific book. It had previously gone to an author’s entire body of work. The South Korean novelist Han Kang won the first iteration of the new prize last year for her quirky novel “The Vegetarian,” about a woman who believes she is turning into a tree.

The shortlist was winnowed down from a longlist of 13 novels announced in March. This year’s winner will be announced on June 14.

Pictured below winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for his novel 'The Sellout', Paul Beatty speaks on stage at the 2016 Man Booker Prize at The Guildhall in London. (REUTERS Pic)