The 2026 longlist for the International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, has been revealed – a ‘sparkling selection’ of 13 ‘fresh and innovative’ books
When something genuinely strong appears, I notice a familiar shift in myself. I stop comparing it to other books and start holding it up against moments in my own life. Against rooms I’ve sat in. Silences I’ve learned to read. That’s usually how I know a book has already begun to stay.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran has done that to me. I didn’t finish it and move on. I kept returning to it in stray moments. Its restraint is not decorative. It understands that history doesn’t enter families through declarations but through habits. Through what is avoided. Through the tone people adopt without realizing it. That feels true to how memory actually travels. Quietly. Persistently.
The Remembered Soldier affected me in a different register. Not because of war as an event, but because of how memory warps under pressure. The way recall edits itself just enough to allow a person to continue living. I’ve seen that kind of distortion up close. The book doesn’t insist on coherence. It allows fragments. That’s why it lingers, not as a story arc, but as flashes that return uninvited.
With The Deserters, I felt the slow pull of a book that doesn’t reward impatience. Énard asks you to sit with moral exhaustion and displacement without offering relief. I don’t imagine this being the book people eagerly recommend at dinner parties. But I do imagine people reopening it years later, when they have the stamina for what it’s actually asking.
The Director unsettled me because it never raises its voice. It treats compromise as something ordinary. Incremental. Almost tasteful. I stopped thinking about film fairly quickly and started thinking about how often talent learns to coexist with cruelty by calling it necessity. Once that thought settles in, it’s hard to dislodge.
She Who Remains offers no softness. I respected that immediately. Survival here isn’t framed as triumph or growth. It is reductive. It takes things away. That refusal to console feels earned and rare.
The Wax Child works through patience rather than shock. It allows belief, maternity, fear, and superstition to coil around each other slowly. Nothing is explained away. The atmosphere does the work. I trust books like that. They don’t rush to convince.
If I had to guess which of these will endure, I’d choose the ones least interested in being impressive. The ones willing to let time do the work. Those tend to become must-reads quietly. Not because they dominate conversation, but because they outlast it.
Looking forward to that quiz to help me figure out where I should start reading
Year after year, the quiz never fails, Amy! Happy readings 🩷
so ecstatic that beloved Taiwan Travelogue made the list!!!! 😭😭❤️🔥❤️🔥
I’ve read amazing feedback on that book, Jim!
On Earth As It Is Beneath!!!
Yesss, I’m so happy about this entry!
When something genuinely strong appears, I notice a familiar shift in myself. I stop comparing it to other books and start holding it up against moments in my own life. Against rooms I’ve sat in. Silences I’ve learned to read. That’s usually how I know a book has already begun to stay.
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran has done that to me. I didn’t finish it and move on. I kept returning to it in stray moments. Its restraint is not decorative. It understands that history doesn’t enter families through declarations but through habits. Through what is avoided. Through the tone people adopt without realizing it. That feels true to how memory actually travels. Quietly. Persistently.
The Remembered Soldier affected me in a different register. Not because of war as an event, but because of how memory warps under pressure. The way recall edits itself just enough to allow a person to continue living. I’ve seen that kind of distortion up close. The book doesn’t insist on coherence. It allows fragments. That’s why it lingers, not as a story arc, but as flashes that return uninvited.
With The Deserters, I felt the slow pull of a book that doesn’t reward impatience. Énard asks you to sit with moral exhaustion and displacement without offering relief. I don’t imagine this being the book people eagerly recommend at dinner parties. But I do imagine people reopening it years later, when they have the stamina for what it’s actually asking.
The Director unsettled me because it never raises its voice. It treats compromise as something ordinary. Incremental. Almost tasteful. I stopped thinking about film fairly quickly and started thinking about how often talent learns to coexist with cruelty by calling it necessity. Once that thought settles in, it’s hard to dislodge.
She Who Remains offers no softness. I respected that immediately. Survival here isn’t framed as triumph or growth. It is reductive. It takes things away. That refusal to console feels earned and rare.
The Wax Child works through patience rather than shock. It allows belief, maternity, fear, and superstition to coil around each other slowly. Nothing is explained away. The atmosphere does the work. I trust books like that. They don’t rush to convince.
If I had to guess which of these will endure, I’d choose the ones least interested in being impressive. The ones willing to let time do the work. Those tend to become must-reads quietly. Not because they dominate conversation, but because they outlast it.
Fabulous 💕📚💕
I've only read 'The Director' but Booker rarely disappoints so I imagine I've got 12 more books to add to my "gotta read" list!
There many independent authors/publushers that should get a nod as well
I’ve read Small Comfort by Ia Genberg and The Wax Child by Olga Rawn. Good and very Scandinavian.
I want to thank the Booker Prize committee for reaching out to me privately and inviting me to include my book on the longlist.
I am honored, really.
But my book is primarily memoir, so I just didn’t think was right to take someone else’s spot on the list.
Good luck!
#blessed