Celebrating Pride with the Booker Prizes
As the world marks Pride Month, we present our pick of Booker-nominated LGBTQ+ novels; and Anton Hur writes how authors, translators and fans of translated fiction are breaking down barriers
12 of the best novels for Pride Month from the Booker Library
Eric Karl Anderson, who writes as Lonesome Reader, recommends a dozen novels from the Booker archives for Pride. From coming-out stories to historical same-sex romances to tales of queer parenthood, this fabulous selection of fiction celebrates a diverse range of LGBTQ+ experiences
Anton Hur: How I learned the truth about young, open-minded readers of translated fiction
In this guest article for Pride Month, International Booker-shortlisted translator Anton Hur explains how he learned that the typical English reader is a myth – and that the readership for translated fiction is much less conservative than he’d been led to believe
One of my fondest memories of the whole 2022 International Booker Prize experience is when I found out that the Happy Stories, Mostly author Norman Erikson Pasaribu and their translator Tiffany Tsao were on the same longlist as me and my authors, Bora Chung and Sang Young Park. I immediately DM’ed Norman on Instagram, but neither of us, they a poet and I a translator, both professions where our ability to find the right word has proven to be something of an asset, used words to express our joy. Instead, we took turns flooding the chat screen with emojis.
They could not believe it. I could not believe it. Two queers, marginalised in their respective territories, entering centre stage for the first time – how could this have happened?
What are your favourite LGBTQ+ reads? Let us know which books you’ll be picking up to celebrate Pride in the comments below…
There are several LGBTQ+ books I am HOPING will make this year's longlist: The New Life, The House of Doors, Juno Loves Legs, In Memoriam, Biography of X, The Late Americans, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility - just to name a few!
A new recent favourite for me is The Membranes by Ti Cha-wei, translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich which sparked an interest in queer Taiwanese literature and film.