The shortlist for this year's International Booker Prize has been announced and comprises six novels in six languages, spanning cultures, styles and more. "Our shortlist opens onto vast geographies of the mind, often showing lives lived against the backdrop of history or, more precisely, interweaving the intimate and the political in radically original ways," says Eleanor Wachtel, the chair of the judging panel. Here's more from NPR.
Paul Lynch's #BookerPrize winning Prophet Song (2023) warns us about the precariousness of liberal society. The mother's relentless interior monologue explores how we might react as a society breaks down from authoritarian rule to civil war & eventual #migration of victims. While one might argue that this is a developing country story reset in #Ireland merely to enhance Anglo-saxon empathy, this resetting is what emphasises its warning @bookstodon
Irish writer Paul Lynch won the 2023 Booker prize for his dystopian novel, "Prophet Song." Two of his compatriots were on the shortlist and another two made the long list. For @TheConversationUS Orlaith Darling, a Ph.D. candidate at Trinity College Dublin, examines the "golden age" of Irish writing.
Borrowed Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein from the library. This copy has a big misprint - about 50 pages are randomly repeated in place of 50 that should be there.
At first I thought wow, these #BookerPrize books really are getting impenetrable 😂 but fortunately I got my hands on a complete copy
I've also just started the audiobook of The Bee Sting. I gave up on trying to read all of the books shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but I've heard great things about this one #BookerPrize#currentlyreading#books#reading#bookstodon
I quite liked Western Lane and If I Survive You, but gave up on This Other Eden after one chapter (which is very unlike me, but I just did not get on with it at all) #BookerPrize#currentlyreading#bookstodon
Well, thanks to the library I did end up giving everything shortlisted for #BookerPrize a go. #Currentlyreading Study for Obedience. Have heard a lot of criticism of the writing style, but so far I'm enjoying this quiet, eerie book. #bookstodon@bookstodon
As just one British writer makes the shortlist for the #BookerPrize, the acceleration of the 'Wimbledonisation' of the prize continues....
I know we should all welcome its new international character, but I think I preferred it when you had to be a British writer to be nominated. There's nothing wrong with being parochial for a National book prize in my view, even if London's (globally minded) literati will think I'm being small-minded.