Shortlist announced for Man Booker International Prize 2013

**The Man Booker International prize is a relatively new endeavour from the founders of the Man Booker Prize. Whereas the latter celebrated its 40th birthday in 2008, the former was only established in 2005.**

Nevertheless, due to the influence of the original Man Booker prize, its international counterpart already ensures that its winner will be held in high esteem. The prize is awarded to a writer for their body of work rather than a single novel and in this way it considers a writer’s overall literary excellence. One of the main criteria of the prize is that the writer’s work must be available in English.

According to the official Man Booker website, the prize was designed to attract ‘the intelligent general audience’, and it maintains their support by having a judging panel comprised of professionals from all walks of life, rather than an inaccessible group of experienced literary critics. In the past, the judging panel has consisted of poets, politicians, broadcasters, actors and journalists.

In previous competitions a panel of only three judges had been selected, but this year the number has been extended to five, meaning that with more judges, more texts can be read and therefore considered for the shortlist. Considering that there can be no submissions for the prize and therefore it is left solely to the discretion of the judges and what they have been able to read, the prize is beginning to hail the recognition of the wider availability of fiction in different forms and translations all over the globe.

This year, there has been some discussion over the profiles of the selected authors. One of the biggest shocks of the shortlist was that of the 10 finalists, only two of could be cited as well-known: previous nominee Marilynne Robinson and Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld.

The shortlist consists of a wide range of nationalities, with authors from Pakistan to Switzerland and only three of the authors on the shortlist are writing in English. This appears to address the issue suffered in previous years where judges focused too much on English-speaking authors, a notion which limits the possibilities and credibility of a prize with ‘international’ in the title.

On the other hand, only 30% of the shortlisted authors are women, and while this could potentially incite some debate about the gender equality of the prize (in addition to the fact that in previous years 75% of the nominated authors have been men), it is fair to say that the judges should not be forced to choose the shortlist based on political correctness and it should be won solely on the merit of the work.

The full list of this year’s finalists comprises of U R Ananthamurty from India, Aharon Appelfeld from Israel, Lydia Davis from the USA, Intizar Husain from Pakistan, Yan Lianke from China, Marie NDiaye from France and who is incidentally the youngest Man Booker International finalist to date at 45, Josip Novakovich from Canada, Marilynne Robinson from the USA, Vladimir Sorokin from Russia and Peter Stamm from Switzerland.

The winner of the prestigious Man Booker International prize receives £60,000 and, in addition, significantly increased sales of their work, the price of which cannot necessarily be calculated. Either way, the prize is no small matter and is a significant publicity boost for the writer. In this way, the award promotes the circulation of high quality literature to the ‘intelligent general audience’, as specified in the aim of the prize, and helps to spread the work of excellent authors from all over the world.

The winner of the 2013 Man Booker International prize will be announced on 22nd May at a dinner at the V&A museum.