The Man Booker International Prize Longlist, 2020

Hello Gentle Reader

The Man Booker International Prize has released its longlist for the new decade of two-thousand and twenty. The longlist provides thirteen titles across the globe, spanning multiple different languages, cultures, and experiences. Once again, this year’s longlist is dominated by independent and smaller publishing houses. It’s becoming a more proven fact that the independent and small publishers are the ones championing translated literature, and providing the opportunity for readers to see unique literary voices beyond their own language. Throughout its new inception (post-2016) the Man Booker International Prize has come into own as a literary award, with a genuine interest in promoting and celebrating translated literature into English. Previous winners of the Man Booker International Prize Longlist include: recent Nobel Laureate, Olga Tokarczuk; the Hungarian postmodern master of the apocalypse, László Krasznahorkai; and the penetrating and graceful psychological novelist Han Kang.

The following is this year’s longlist for the Man Booker International Prize: [in no particular order]:

Yoko Ogawa – Japan – “The Memory Police,”

Willem Anker – South Africa [Afrikaans] – “Red Dog,”

Emmanuelle Pagano – France – “Faces on the Tip of My Tongue,”

Shokoofeh Azar – Iran – “The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree,”

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara – Argentina – “The Adventures of China Iron,”

Jon Fosse – Norway – “The Other Name: Septology I-II,”

Fernanda Melchor – Mexico – “Hurricane Season,”

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld – The Netherlands – “The Discomfort of Evening,”

Daniel Kehlmann – Germany/Austria – “Tyll,”

Enrique Vila-Matas – Spain – “Mac and His Problem,”

Michel Houellebecq – France – “Serotonin,”

Samanta Schweblin – Argentina – “Little Eyes,”

Nino Haratischwili – Georgia – “The Eighth Life,”

The longlist contains both established and new writers, once again proving that the Booker International Prize values both sets of writers; whereas at times the Booker Prize fixates on more established writers, rather than providing the necessary attention to more recent writers. In this, the Booker Prize often comes across a prize stalled and idling, with the judges sitting and huffing on the recycled exhaust pumped in. Often with the Booker Prize, he same candidates (if they have published a recent novel) are conventionally guaranteed a position on the Booker Prize Longlist; often at the cost at more interesting, engaging, and exciting voices in contemporary English language literature. This makes the Booker International Prize a great foil to the original. Of these thirteen writers longlist there are eight languages represented via the novels: Japanese, French, Afrikaans, Farsi, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Spanish.

Willem Anker’s novel “Red Dog,” is a historical epic, providing historical details and fictionalized account of the legendary Coenraad de Buys, and through this novel William Anker provides an account of the bloody birth of South Africa as a colony. Coenraad de Buys becomes a legendary and unofficial representative of South Africa’s colonial roots and identity. The bastardization of the land, the people more mongrel then the purebred’s of home; the need for survival in the brutality. The entire novel is made up for the contradictions of the time, create a macro tapestry in the image of one individual: Coenraad de Buys, who is both hero and rebel. It’s a remarkable novel, who fixates on a larger than life historical figure, which becomes a pillar of the later national identity, its culture, language, and values. Since the longlist has been announced, however, Willem Anker has been accused of plagiarism with regards to passages of his novel “Red Dog,” and serendipitously similar passages appearing from Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Blood Meridian.” The notion of plagiarism has become a slippery slope to discuss in the context of creative writing. Some view the scavenging use of secondhand prose, as a postmodern form of intertextuality. Either way, the criticism has created a significant amount of controversy concerning the legitimacy of Willem Anker’s novels originality, and the suitability of his nomination for the Booker International Prize.

Politics and literature are not always, easily separated, as is the case with Shokoofeh Azar, an Iranian writer, who immigrated to Australia as a refugee, politics can be a complex situation. The translator for her novel “The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree,” has remained anonymous for political concerns. Azar’s novel is narrated by the ghost of a thirteen year old girl, whose family is displaced from their home in Tehran to a small village, their intention is to retain and maintain their intellectual freedoms; but in post-revolutionary Iran normalcy is no longer an option, and the family is swept up in the chaos. The novel traces the political macro in the personal trauma. The novel has been described as a poetic masterpiece, about the ability of storytelling to bring meaning to the otherwise senseless and madness of a post-revolutionary world.

Argentina is becoming a more prominent literary exporter. On the Booker International Prize alone there are two Argentinean writers have been longlisted. Over the past few years in numerous translated awards, Argentine writers are becoming an increasingly common site. This is Samanta Schweblin’s third time being nominated for the Booker International Prize. Previously, Schweblin was on the shortlist in two-thousand and seventeen with her novel “Fever Dream,” and last year she was nominated for her short story collection “Mouthful of Birds.” Samanta Schweblin has proven herself to being on the most promising writers heralding from Argentina with a global approach to her writing. “Little Eyes,” is a novel about the global interconnectedness of the world, and the dangers this involves. The novel is surreal, but is all but grounded in contemporary reality and future possibilities. “Little Eyes,” is a cautionary, surreal, and otherwise inclining dystopian story from one of the most established and successful writers from Argentina. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and her novel “The Adventures of China Iron,” is one of the novels championed and published by a small independent publisher. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s novel is a strange historical and literary revision of “The Gaucho Martin Fierro.” It’s a postcolonial, queer, surreal, comic romp of a novel, and is praised for these traits; though I remain hesitant.

France also has two writers listed on the longlist. First and foremost the internationally renowned and controversial writer: Michel Houellebecq, and his critically acclaimed novel “Serotonin.” The novel is typical of Houellebecq, barely veiled nihilism encompassing an otherwise depressing narrative of a disenfranchised and depressed agricultural scientist who seeks to restart his life, but finds himself in a changing bleak situation—both social and economic situation with disenfranchised farmers, which leads to a riot. The novel is riddled with Houellebecq’s otherwise curt perspective on society, people and perspective. It takes topical social and thematic concerns facing French society and begins to ponder the individuals destiny, freedom, and meaning within an increasingly globalized, but alienating world. Critics found Houellebecq novel poignantly prophetic, as the novel depicted the disruption and barricades of roadways and logistic hubs by farmers; which was later performed by the Yellow Vest Movement. In comparison to Michel Houellebecq; Emmanuelle Pagano is less well known to English readers. Pagano has only one other book translated and published in English: “Trysting,” was written in a collection of vignettes, aphorisms, scenes, and snapshot observations about love in its many forms, without prejudice to gender or sexuality, circumstance, perception, or emotional experience. “Faces on the Tip of My Tongue,” utilizes the same fragmentary and multifaceted form to discuss the peripheral, forgotten, and at times disturbed individuals of rural France. The stories, monologues, and vignette’s provide a brutal and honest depiction of their lives, their surroundings, and their limited acknowledgement they receive from the outside world. “Faces on the Tip of My Tongue,” has been praised as a powerful literary book, which may be overlooked as lightweight or limited in capacity; but nothing could be farther from the truth. Much like “Serotonin,” Emmanuelle Pagano provides a critique of the globalized world from the perspective of the forgotten and alienated rural community.

Another giant of global literature on the Booker International Prize Longlist is Jon Fosse. When it comes to remarks on Fosse’s work, critics mention his theatrical work first and foremost. Fosse is one of the most produced and performed living playwright in the world. His dramatic texts have been compared to the solemn gravitas of Henrik Ibsen; while also employing the minimalist repetitive text of Samuel Beckett. Fosse’s prose is noted for its rhythmic flow, described by Fosse as a combination of flotsam and jetsam. His minimalist repetitive prose is noted for following the same wave like procession of the sea.  “The Other Name: Septology I-II,” concerns the doppelganger entities named Asle (a common name in Fosse’s work). The two Asle’s rotate and orbit; touch and influence each other—they’re but the two halves of the same individual, grappling with the existential struggles of life and death; meaning and meaningless; love, hope, faith and despair. The two have taken different approaches to how they handle their existential doubts and crisis’s. In controlled, reserved, minimalist prose, Jon Fosse traces these two lives in their familiarity, alienation, and otherwise quiet if albeit solitary and strange lives. Jon Fosse’s ‘slow prose,’ is not described as every reader’s preference. Much like his plays, Fosse’s prose can come across as strange, dreamlike and ethereal as it depicts the acquiescence of life. Fosse’s prose may not be difficult or explosively experimental; it’s simple, minimal, and measured in its rhythmic progress. These same qualities often irritate readers, who find a lack of progression and action a lack of narrative; but the beauty of Fosse’s prose is the reader’s experience of slipping into the pulsating melody of his prose.

Yoko Ogawa has had an otherwise complicated relationship with the English language; as initial attempts of her translations into the English language, were publishers trying to capitalize on the then Haruki Murakami Wave. The waters were initially tested with some of her stories published in The New Yorker. The reception was obviously positive, as a collection of her three novellas’ came out in the late two-thousands, followed by her immensely successful “The Housekeeper and the Professor.” Yet, from there Ogawa proved herself to not being a sentimental writer, who riddled her work with kitschy and melodramatic plots. Off of the pink cherry blossom warmth of “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” came the dark and grotesque works, which were insinuated in her early collection of novellas (“The Diving Pool,”) came the sexually twisted novel “Hotel Iris,” and the macabre and haunting short story collection “Revenge.” Six years later, Yoko Ogawa’s novel “The Memory Police,” is translated and published. The reception has been ecstatic and positive. The novel itself is a beautiful testament on the notion of memory, with dystopian elements, which slowly subside into a more existential testament on the notion of memory, identity, and the concept of being. Unfortunately the translation of the title mistakenly does not hint at the beautiful nuances of the novels true potential. The title itself has no poeticism, and intends to market the novel as a science fiction dystopian allegory of totalitarianism. On the contrary the French title “Cristallisation Secrète,” [“Secret Crystallization,”] provides a more ethereal title providing insinuation of the finer philosophical points the novel seeks to deliver. I hope to see Yoko Ogawa and her novel “The Memory Police,” on the shortlist for this year’s prize.

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld is a rising star in the Dutch literary scene. Debuting as a poet, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld gathered noticeable attention, receiving the C. Buddingh’ Prize for a debut poetry collection, and media attention praising Rijneveld was one of the most interesting poetic voices in the Dutch literary scene. Her debut novel “The Discomfort of Evening,” was immediately praised, and has received an excited reception in the English language. The novel reflects on grief, sadness, and death through the eyes of a child, whose fantasies are both escape and understanding of the world. The novel employees the poetic exuberance of Marieke Lucas Rijneveld poetry, complete with distinct imagery. “The Discomfort of Evening,” has been a highly anticipated translated novel, and the reviews assure readers that it has been worth the wait.

Enrique Vila-Matas and Daniel Kehlmann are not new to the English language either. Enrique Vila-Matas is known for his postmodern and literary puzzle like narratives, employing different styles, genres, and metafictional elements to analyze and deconstruct literature as a component of human invention to express meaning, which in time is now a form which provides and depicts meaning. “Mac and His Problem,” is about an unemployed man (Mac) suffering from ennui. He lives off his wife’s salary and in his boredom decides to write and maintain a diary. His wife of course disproves of the act, believing it both a waste of time and a step further into depression, Mac on the other hand persists. In his usual routine, Mac has a chance encounter with a neighbour who happens to have written a collection of wistful and obscure stories who had some minor success. Mac decides he will read and obviously improve his neighbours stories. What follows is a surreal jaunt into the realm of the surreal; where Mac’s grip on reality becomes increasingly distant, as Mac slips further into the literary, one haunted by the inclinations of death, and invigorated with the joys of writing. Enrique Vila-Matas maintains true to his form, by continually exploring the realm and boundaries of metafiction, and literature as a treatise on literature. Daniel Kehlmann is one of the German languages most renowned contemporary writers, who has found reasonable success in the English language. Kehlmann’s recently translated novel “Tyll,” is a historical novel with magical realistic revisions. The novel recounts the legend and folklore of Tyll Ulenspiegel, who continually defies death in his artistic achievements, while exploring the complicated historical world—escaping the quiet village that was once home; the cannonballs flying on the battlefields of war; all the while meeting a unique brand of characters, which includes the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia. Daniel Kehlmann proves himself at being a masterful story teller, and an accomplished writer who can captivate audiences with a romp of adventure, while dazzling with his acute research, insight, and depth into the human heart and mind.

The last two writers are new to the English language. Nino Haratischwili is a Georgian writer, living in Germany and writing in German; her novel: “The Eighth Life,” is a family saga in the century that begins sweet, and turns sour. The family of this novel is Georgian who have found privilege, success, and prosperity, thanks to chocolate; a secret chocolate recipe which only they know. The novel has been praised for its expansive scope, historical accuracy, characterization, and otherwise enjoyable story. Fernanda Melchor’s English language debut “Hurricane Season,” has been praised for the same force in which it has entered the English language. The novel acutely captures the claustrophobia and paranoia of small town life, suddenly upended by the discovery of the murdered remains of the resident ‘witch.’ What follows is a linguistic torrent of the upended community, riddled with new acts of untold brutality or depravity. “Hurricane Season,” is a dazzling novel riddled with small town mythology, influenced by the ever present violence of the world; the same kind of violence that becomes a piece of the landscape itself. “Hurricane Season,” is a formidable debut in the English language, well received, critically praised, and haunting from start to finish. 

     

There it is Gentle Reader, the Booker International Prize Longlist, a unique blend of known and unknown writers to the English language. It’s a unique list blending different narratives, themes, stories, and forms. It’s a longlist noted for its remarkable diversity in forms, themes, geography, language, and writers. The difficulty now facing the judges is creating a shortlist, just as strong.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary