Man Booker and Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Merge

Hello Gentle Reader

Whether one likes it or not, the “Man Booker International,” Prize and the “Independent Foreign Fiction Prize,” have reconfigured and merged. The two awards have merged, under the current “Man Booker International Award,” name. However instead of the award being awarded, biannually, it will not be awarded, on an annual basis to a work of translated literary fiction. As Jonathan Taylor the chair of Man Booker Foundation stated, the “Man Booker International,” prize had lost momentum over the years, it was not awarded (as the award was a biannual award); but also that it was a bit confusing, that it was awarded to a life time body of work. However the “Man Booker International Prize,” was less fascinating and less international, than one would suspect. All of the winners were well known figures in its short ten year history. The first winner was the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, followed by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe; two-thousand and thirteen Nobel Laureate and Canadian Alice Munro, then two American writers Philip Roth and Lydia Davis, and ending with László Krasznahorkai. Only three of the authors, where from countries not of English dominance (Albania, Nigeria and Hungary); while the other four, are considered giants in the English language. Anything of an international appeal was severely lacking. The “Man Booker International,” Prize was an in a sense an attempt at rivaling the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, this dream was not achieved. Personally, I think it considerably lacked any imagination and creativity in looking beyond the reigning globalized language frontier. This led to the award going to more popular and well known writers, and painfully going to two American writers in a period of four years. It became apparent, that the award lacked an international flare and feel.

On the flipside the “Independent Foreign Fiction,” prize promoted translated literature in English. There was no dominance of country or language for the award. Recipients of the award included but not limited to: Orhan Pamuk, Jose Saramago (both future Nobel Laureates) Gerbrand Bakker, W.G. Sebald and Jenny Erpenbeck. The award acknowledged both writers, and translators – as writer and translator, would share the prize money.

Now the two awards have merged together. This will hopefully create a strong award that seeks to promote translations of foreign works of fiction into English. As it stands only three percent of books published in the English language are of another language. Jonathan Taylor himself has stated:

“[. . .] We very much hope that this reconfiguration of the prize will encourage a greater interest and investment in translation.”

For more information onto the reconfigured award, please follow the link below:

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/man-booker-306625

Personally Gentle Reader, I hope this new reconfiguration will help translated fiction become more apparent in publishing in the English language, and that prominent international names, will share the stage with writers of more obscurity, and yet with great talent.

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M. Mary