Books translated from Japanese, Danish and Kannada among shortlist for the 2025 International Booker Prize
The annual award celebrates international fiction titles that have been translated into English
Six books from around the world, including translations from Japanese, Danish and Kannada, are shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
The annual award celebrates the best works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland. The £50,000 (approx. $90,484 Cdn) grand prize is divided equally between writer and translator. There were no Canadians nominated this year.
The prize was set up to boost the profile of fiction in other languages — which accounts for only a small share of books published in Britain — and to salute the underappreciated work of literary translators.
This is the first time a book translated from Kannada, a language spoken in southern India, has been recognized by the International Booker Prize. Heart Lamp is a collection of stories by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, that explores the lives of Muslim women in southern India.
Two French translations are on the shortlist: Small Boat, by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson, about migrants trying to cross the English Channel, and A Leopard-Skin Hat, by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson, about an intense platonic friendship and a woman grappling with psychological problems.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda, is also on the shortlist. Set in the far distant future, it imagines a world where children are made in factories.
Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes, follows an expat millennial couple who move to Berlin but find themselves disillusioned by what they find there.
The final book on the shortlist is On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J Haveland, about a bookseller trapped in a time loop.
The books were selected by a five-person jury chaired by English writer and editor Max Porter.
"This list is our celebration of fiction in translation as a vehicle for pressing and surprising conversations about humanity," said Porter in a press statement. "These mind-expanding books ask what might be in store for us, or how we might mourn, worship or survive. They offer knotty, sometimes pessimistic, sometimes radically hopeful answers to these questions. Taken together they build a miraculous lens through which to view human experience, both the truly disturbing and the achingly beautiful. They are each highly specific windows onto a world, but they are all gorgeously universal."
They are each highly specific windows onto a world, but they are all gorgeously universal.- Max Porter, jury chair
Joining Porter on the jury is Nigerian-British writer, director and photographer Caleb Femi, Sana Goyal, editor and publishing director of Wasafiri literary magazine, Korean novelist and translator Anton Hur and English musician Beth Orton.
"We haven't chosen these six books because we are book experts who think people need to be told what to read. We have chosen them because we need them, we found them, and we love them," said Porter.
"We need literature that shocks, delights and baffles and reveals how weird many of us feel about the way we are living now. Ultimately, these books widen the view. They enhance the quality of conversation we are all having. They don't shut down debate, they generate it. They don't have all the answers, but they ask extraordinary questions."
Books published in the U.K. or Ireland between May 1, 2024 and April 30, 2025 were eligible for this year's prize. Authors of any nationality are eligible. Publishers submitted 154 books for consideration.
The winner will be announced on May 20.
Last year's winner was German author Jenny Erpenbeck for Kairos, the story of a tangled love affair during the final years of East Germany's existence, translated by Michael Hofmann.
With files from the Associated Press
