Get to know the judges for the International Booker Prize 2024
We caught up with some of the judges of this year's prize to hear more about their reading habits, their favourite works of translated fiction and why the International Booker Prize matters
In less than two week’s time, on March 11, the longlist for the International Booker Prize 2024 will be announced.
The 12 or 13 works of fiction, translated from a wide range of languages into English and published in the UK and Ireland, will be chosen by this year’s judging panel, chaired by esteemed broadcaster Eleanor Wachtel.
‘Literature subverts, it questions the lines we draw between people and places, our expectations, revealing an interiority that can change everything,’ Wachtel previously told the Booker Prizes. ‘I’m so looking forward to sharing these explorations with my fellow judges – an ad hoc book club of renowned writers, artists and readers,’ she added.
Wachtel’s fellow judges include award-winning poet Natalie Diaz; Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera; groundbreaking visual artist William Kentridge; and acclaimed writer, editor and translator Aaron Robertson.
The judges are currently working their way through the books that have been submitted for the prize, and as they whittle down well over a hundred works of translated fiction to select this year’s longlist, we caught up with them to hear more about their paths to becoming readers, the role translated fiction plays in promoting a more inclusive and diverse literary canon, and what they are hoping to find among this year's submissions.
Eleanor Wachtel (Chair of judges)
Why do you think the International Booker Prize matters, and what’s special or unique about it?
‘Over more than 30 years of interviewing the very best international authors, I’ve come to understand the power of translators to open borders of the imagination and to create a worldwide community of readers.
‘Alongside those writers who speak to us of the culture of their homelands, many of the finest voices also come from diasporic experiences, of displacement and exile. They bring us a bifocal image of the world – where they’ve come from and where they’ve landed: langue de départ et langue d’arrivée. The translation of their work into English carries this movement forward, enhanced by the dedicated attention that the International Booker Prize provides.’
Aaron Robertson
In recent years, translators and their working relationships with authors have become more visible. Why do you think it is important to shine a spotlight on this role?
In 2021, there were a slew of articles and debates about the American poet Amanda Gorman and her foreign translators. People were asking different questions: Who was given the opportunity to translate this prominent Black author’s work? Did it matter whether Gorman’s translators were Black or not? These two questions have very different concerns, but ugly misunderstandings arose. Wires were getting crossed, and people were talking past one another. A debate that probably should have centred more on invisible labour, economic disparity (and its intersection with race and gender identities), and educational pipelines got lost in an uproar about race essentialism. The question of who gets the opportunity to translate and publish a book and why is actually not an easy one to answer. Do you have a foothold in the publishing world or academia, or not? Have you networked with the right magazine editors or publishers? Have you been given the information to know how to do this? Where? What brought you to these advantaged spaces? A recent Authors Guild survey of working conditions for U.S.-based translators (in 2022) suggests that the economic prospects for translators have generally deteriorated. It’s important for us to understand why.
Romesh Gunesekera
What are you particularly looking forward to or already enjoying about the process of judging the prize? Has anything surprised you so far?
Opening my eyes to new worlds and different ways of making novels. I am already surprised at how much the form of the novel can be redefined, but I am also surprised at the similarities I have found across languages and countries. As a writer it is easy to believe you are writing on your own and forging a path no one has been on before. But we are all working with similar material and similar tools and our influences are not so separate. You may think you are heading for an island no one has ever been to before, but when you reach your destination you discover another writer, from another continent, has made the same journey. Turns out being novel may not be the most important element of a novel.
William Kentridge
What role do you think translated fiction plays in promoting a more inclusive and diverse literary canon, and how can we encourage more people to read it?
I think the canon often has to do with which books people choose to teach at university or high school. But there’s certainly a lot of publishing and writing in many different voices, in many different languages. I don’t think there’s a shortage of women writers who have been well-recognised and there’s a great interest in writers who aren’t European. The trouble is that there are usually one or two authors that have to represent a whole language. So you have Marquez having to stand in for all of South America, you’ve got Mahfouz having to be the voice of Egypt, you’ve got Orhan Pamuk speaking for Turkey. It’s very hard if you’re a writer in these languages to become the writer that people are always going to think about. I’m sure there are many other great Egyptian, Turkish, Colombian writers that I’ve just never come across. So there is a problem of how does one expand the canon? How does one show people? But I don’t think it’s a canon that’s restricted to English by any means, and I think there’s been a long history of reading in translation. So, the great follower of Cervantes, Stern, read him in translation. The great follower of Stern, Gogol, would have read him in translation. The sense of jumping across context is how we read and how we work.
Which books do you think will make the International Booker Prize 2024 longlist? Let us know your predictions in the comments below…
Kala by Colin Walsh
It is interesting to see William Kentridge here, he is a fellow South African. A very vexing problem that Booker could help to address is how very restricted our access is to publishing rights. I have a list as long as my arm that I can't access to read electronically or to listen to. I guess that goes for the rest of Africa too? Could you insist that books chosen by you have to be accesable electronically?