6 bøker har fått plass på kortlista, og den er som følger:
* Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott
* Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann
* The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson
* Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae
* What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey
* Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
About the shortlist:
* Six languages (Dutch, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish), six countries (Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea and Sweden) and three continents (Asia, Europe and South America) are represented.
* Chair of judges Eleanor Wachtel says: ‘Our shortlist, while implicitly optimistic, engages with current realities of racism and oppression, global violence and ecological disaster’.
* International Booker Prize Administrator Fiammetta Rocco adds: ‘The books cast a forensic eye on divided families and divided societies, revisiting pasts both recent and distant to help make sense of the present’.
* Among the authors and translators, nine women and four men are shortlisted.
* Several countries on the shortlist have a strong International Booker Prize pedigree: South Korea is represented for the third year running and Argentina for the fourth time in five years.
* Itamar Viera Junior is shortlisted for his debut novel and Hwang Sok-yong is shortlisted for his ninth book translated into English. Previously longlisted authors Hwang and Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Sora Kim-Russell progress to the shortlist for the first time.
* Five of the books are published by independents, including two books published by Scribe UK. Indies have won the prize six times out of eight since 2016.
XOXO