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In the world of the Booker Prizes this week: we count down to the IBP longlist; novels for fans of The White Lotus; the best of the Booker in the 1990s; plus banned books from the Booker Library
Just four days until the International Booker Prize 2025 longlist is announced
In just a few days’ time, the 12 or 13 books in contention for this year’s International Booker Prize, the world’s most influential award for translated fiction, will be revealed – and we can’t wait!
As we count down, Max Porter, Chair of this year’s judging panel, explained what draws him to fiction in translation in an interview with the Booker Prizes website. ‘Translated literature is a crucial tool in understanding one another better,’ he said. ‘It is the global consciousness at its most open, vulnerable and insightful. It’s where we might truly meet one another.’
The longlist will be announced on thebookerprizes.com and our social channels on Tuesday, 25 February, at 2pm (GMT). We hope you’ll join us, as we reveal a feast of fiction from around the world.
Nine Booker Prize-nominated books for fans of The White Lotus
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last four years, you’ll know that The White Lotus has become a TV phenomenon. Mike White’s razor-sharp satire skewered the toxic behaviour and shallow preoccupations of spoilt, morally dubious, jet-setting Westerners with black humour and biting dialogue.
Just like the show, the Booker Library offers plenty of must-reads that pull no punches when it comes to exploring dark secrets and twisted truths. Whether you love The White Lotus for its blistering social critique, murder-mystery intrigue, or uneasy blend of paradise and peril, these books tap into its signature cocktail of decadence and disaster. Here are nine Booker-nominated novels to pick up next – just don’t expect a relaxing getaway.
The Booker Prize in the 1990s: 10 novels that are well worth revisiting
By the 1990s, the Booker Prize was the lynchpin of the literary prize year, and continued to transform the fortunes of its winners. Yet the prize induced strong opinions. In 1992, A.N. Wilson called the prize ‘essentially trivial’, though evidently changed his mind when he agreed to judge it four years later (and caused the Booker administrator to panic when Wilson hand-signalled the winner en route to his table at the prize dinner).
Here are some of the best shortlisted novels from the 1990s, which remain essential reading today.
Banned and censored novels from the Booker Library
Throughout history, works of fiction have been censored, suppressed and banned by anxious authorities.
‘What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist,’ said Salman Rushdie, the 1981 Booker Prize winner and seven-time nominated author – perhaps the most famously banned author in modern history. Here, in the spirit of Rushdie’s words, is a selection of works from the Booker Library that have boldly confronted these challenges.
Which books do you hope to see on this year’s International Booker Prize longlist? Let us know your predictions in the comments below!
Please note the longlist announcement is actually Tuesday, 25 February, at 2pm (GMT), not BST, as originally stated in our email!
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