The International Booker Prize is a prestigious award given each year to the best fiction book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. This award started in 2005 to celebrate international literature and the skill of translating books into different languages. The prize honours both the original author and the translator, with the prize money being evenly split between them. The International Booker Prize is respected worldwide for bringing people together through stories from different cultures and countries.

The important thing to note about this longlist, which has a lot of entries this season, is that a quarter of the books are from South American writers. These books come from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela. It is interesting as it might show a new wave of great fiction from Latin America, but only time will tell if this is really the case.

Following are the 13 books that have been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024:

1. Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott.

2. Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon, translated by Noel Hernandez Gonzalez and Daniel Hahn.

3. Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann.

4. The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson.

5. White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster.

6. Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae.

7. A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson.

8. The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk.

9. What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey.

10. Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko.

11. The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky.

12. Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz.

13. Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches.

The Booker Prize focuses on translated works, awarding £50,000 (approximately 52 Lakh) in prize money, equally divided between the author and the translator, with each receiving £25,000. In cases of multiple translators, this sum is shared equally among them. Additionally, books that reach the shortlist receive a bonus of £5,000 (approximately 5 Lakh), also split equally between the author and the translator(s).

The six shortlisted books are scheduled to be announced on April 9, this year, followed by the winner on May 21, 2024, at an event in London.