The International Booker Prize Shortlist 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize has come leaps and bounds over last years award. This year’s shortlist is both surprising but not without merit in its inductees and exclusions. It’s a mixture of internationally recognized giants and writers who are finding their foothold in translation. Without further delay here are the six shortlisted titles:

            “On Earth As It Is Beneath,” – Ana Paula Maia
            “The Director,” – Daniel Kehlmann
            “Taiwan Travelogue,” – Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
            “She Who Remains,” – Rene Karabash
            “The Witch,” – Marie Ndiaye
            “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” – Shida Bazyar

The most telling feature of this year’s shortlist is how easily dominated it is by female writers, with the German Daniel Kehlmann being the only male on this year’s shortlist. This further supports recent macro trends in publishing and literary consumption, whereby female readers out pace men in consumption and interest, and there are subsequently more and more women being published than men. Kehlmann is an internationally renowned writer, whose novels with their appreciation for the absurd and ability to subvert and bringing into question reality, have delighted his readers both in his native German and abroad. “The Director,” continues Daniel Kehlmann’s exploration and reinvention of the historical by interrogating the strange relationship between the director and the Nazi’s. The novel poses serious questions about the integrity of art in service to political brutality; the absolution of being a cog within the machine and spared the conviction of collaborator or conspirator; all while questioning the sanctity of survival when compared to the destitution of sacrifice. “The Director,” is by in large the biggest name on this year’s shortlist and perceived by many the breakout front runner.

The Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia equally confronts questions of brutality and violence with her novel “On Earth As It Is Beneath.” The penal colony of the novel is founded on the blood-soaked grounds of a colonial atrocity, where the enslaved were tortured and murdered, and while the penal colony was built under the auspicious understanding that it would rehabilitate its inmates to realign with societal expectations, what it actually succeeded in doing was merely detaining and retaining the inmates. Trapping them in their own world. what happens then, when this world is no longer sustainable? Violence breeds further violence. The inhumanity of it spreads with rabid fervor. In this Ana Paula Maia reckons with the baseline component of the human condition, one nurtured in our inherent primordial violent nature, which has only refined itself further into a sociopolitical context. It is here Ana Paula Maia begins to probe the unfathomable consequences of our failure as a species and as a society, to come to terms with our social and politically violent nature of our actions or as is so often common now, in action. One of you, Gentle Readers, João Böger high lighted Ana Paula Maia as quite the talent, and while the premise of “On Earth As it is Beneath,” may sound unsettling and dark in the tradition of say Golding’s “Lord of The Flies,” this novel and its thematic preoccupation with the shadow of human nature continues to be relevant to our times.

To some extent I am surprised to see Mathias Énard and Olga Ravn omitted from the shortlist. Perhaps more so for Ravn with her novel “The Wax Child,” than Énard. “The Deserters.” All the while, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and her novel “Taiwan Travelogue,” has the air of a dark horse and should not be ruled out. It is not surprising to see “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” also make it to the years shortlist, considering the events currently unfolding in the Middle East. Though all in all this year’s shortlist is decent enough. A curious offering of different genres, perspectives and narratives.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Wiesław Myśliwski Dies Aged 94

Hello Gentle Reader,

Olga Tokarczuk once commented on the precarious state of Poland after reviewing an archaic encyclopedia in England, which described Poland in an entry as a “country which pops up on the maps of Europe time to time.” This external perspective of the country surprised Tokarczuk who was raised to believe that Poland had always existed. Poland, however, is one of those middle powers, who throughout its existence was always in danger of being absorbed by larger power. Its sovereignty partitioned; its borders changeable, shiftable, malleable. Despite being a formidable imperial power at one point in its history, the country disappeared from maps for over a hundred years. This sense of history erasure inevitably would leave to some sense of nationalistic existential fear. The 20^th century in turn was no kinder to the nation, whereby it was subject to the avarice of its neighbours. First the Nazi’s then the Soviet Union. Each one carved out their mark on the nation with authoritarian malice. Rather than demoralizing the nation, however, Poland has rebounded, becoming an emerging contender on the world stage and is often discussed in hushed tones as an up-and-coming superpower. Recent Russian aggression towards its neighbours – specifically Ukraine – have also seen Poland further galvanize itself, investing heavily in its military infrastructure and defense capabilities. Poland understands the hard-earned truth: one’s sovereignty is only guaranteed by their capacity and willingness to defend it. Culturally, Poland is another one of those nations, which punches far above its weight. Wiesław Myśliwski was one of the grand masters of contemporary Polish literature. A master of the literary monologue, Myśliwski’s novels often found themselves framed in the ancient and primordial narrative structure of the orator’s monologue. The essence of the storyteller’s soul. Through novels such as “Stone Upon Stone,” winner of the now defunct Best Translated Book Award in 2012, and “A Treatise on Shelling Beans,” and the recently translated “Needle’s Eye,” Wiesław Myśliwski employed and perfected the dramatic monologue, which distilled the epicism of time, the upheaval and tragedy of history, into a singular individual voice, resilient as it weathers the course of both time and history. Wiesław Myśliwski was often praised for maintaining the ‘peasant narrative,’ in his novels, which is part to his rich earthly language; one which had profound understanding of hard work and hard life, forged through authenticity and experience of having tilled the soil or digging graves. This is further captured by an employment of a rich colloquial language of the rural landscape, one which is at home beneath the broad sky and open fields. The provincial and rural landscape of Myśliwski’s narratives is equally transformed beyond its meager borders, taking on a philosophical and universal appeal, being the backdrop to greater existential ponderings and questions, confronted through daily life and work. Wiesław Myśliwski’s novels are equally renowned for being rich and textured. Narratives move through memories with a meandering rivers touch, never on a direct course or in a linear fashion. Novels can be fragmented in structure, connected by the sinew of thematic concern rather than by chronological events.

The death of Wiesław Myśliwski is a significant loss to Polish literature. Myśliwski was a writer whose rustic epic narratives captured a provincial Poland through the past tumultuous century. Rest in Peace Wiesław Myśliwski.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

– L –

Loneliness isn’t what kills people. Rather it’s the sudden realization, after the noise and din recedes, that they have no original thought; an echo of silence is deafening as it is hollow.

Young Once

Hello Gentle Reader,

There is a quote from Patrick Modiano’s novel “Out of the Dark,” which attempts to capture the essence of many of Modiano’s narrators and characters, who have, in a myriad of ways, been orphaned by time and having been left untethered and unmoored within a liminal space, one whose temporal nodal points have yet to be delineated in any chronological construct outside of the understanding they exist within the wake of ominous events and periods; specifically in these cases, the dog eared era known as “The Occupation,” and “Vichy,” both during and after, whose shadows underpin a France – and more specifically Paris – whose eagerness to change their wartime narrative, is not only a nationalistic point of concern but an existential one, which can only be achieved through demolishing the reminders of this humiliation and disgrace, and reconstruct a new one to fit their preferential image of: underground resistance, everyday subterfuge and the unyielding principles and ideals that are unmistakably French: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; while simultaneously erasing or denying any testimony, testament or evidence to the contrary, that is, competing discourse, which brings to light or gives air to the notion that France or its citizens, complied, aided, abetted, or worst of all: collaborated with the occupying forces; and so Paris and France during this interlude become shapeless and shifting, completely emancipated from time, which extends into these postwar periods, populated by Modiano’s characters and narrators: amnesiac drifters, disillusioned writers and filmmakers, questioning detectives and investigators, directionless youth, vagabonds, petty criminals and other dubious and disgraced shadows; who Modiano writes:

“We had no real qualities, except the one that youth gives to everyone for a very brief time, like a vague promise that will never be kept.”

Youth unto itself is not a subject or theme specified in the novels of Patrick Modiano. Rather it is a state. A piece of the novels landscape. A feature employed to provide some definition of narrator or the subsequent characters, in addition to placing them within some context of time. Modiano’s eternal themes are far more compelling beyond the transient mercurial period of youth; memory, its mechanics and unreliability; time, both its passage and its caustic disintegrating touch; identity, both its shifting nature and the search for it, having been obsoleted by the passage of time, erased by amnesia, or reconfigured and reinvented; all of which is wrapped up in Modiano’s signature style: unadorned atmospheric prose, a reserved language caked with dust, perpetually distant veiled by a layer of gauze obscuring any sense of clarity or elucidation. It is difficult to imagine sunlight in Modiano’s world, which instead finds itself coloured in sepia tones or the black and white portraits of the mid-century postwar noir world. Sunlight in the world of Modiano exists simply to frame, pose, texturize and characterise the shadows. Conversely, it will become such an overwhelming substance it bleaches and erases the world into a whiteout of nothingness. As a writer, Patrick Modiano is not concerned with illuminating or enlightening. Rather, Modiano is a writer compelled with asking questions, strolling through obscured boulevards, retracing a lost landscape on the verge of being redeveloped, displacing the ghosts, the memories, the evidence of ones past or their connection to it. Phone books, address books, personal notebooks – another staple of Modiano’s fiction – become the portable archives capturing this evaporating and evolving urbane world, desperate to transform itself into something new and modern, something with soft lighting and vogue products, be it clothes, purses, hats, perfumes. Whatever it is, just make it luxurious. Do away with the old dim garages with their enduring smell of petrol. The operation itself one which celebrates the notion of being perpetually: ‘in transit.’ The state of transience is the cornerstone of the conditions for back door dealings and black markets. Just imagine then, the back offices glowing behind opaque windows. Who knows what questionable business agreements took place back there. The records having been thrown into various fires. The documentation, corroboration and confirmation of all those suspicions is expelled from the chimneys in plumes of ubiquitous smoke. The means to get the conviction, and if not conviction then the ratification, of what took place have all but disappeared, having been destroyed. There is a misguided notion that this would stamp authenticity to one’s memories, affirming their sense of time and place in addition to veracity. Never forget, in a Patrick Modiano novel resolution including confirmations, affirmations, ratifications, do not take place. Conclusions are too neat, too clean. Modiano never ends in certainty, but fades further into the inarticulate incompletion of ellipses.

The surreal duality of life under the occupation as cited by the Swedish Academy in the Nobel Prize citation, is finally presented and given some tangible shape in Patrick Modiano’s Nobel Lecture:

“That Paris of the occupation was a strange place. On the surface, life went on ‘as before’ – the theatres, cinemas, music halls and restaurants were open for business. There were songs playing on the radio. Theatre and cinema attendances were in fact much higher than before the war, as if these places were shelters where people gathered and huddled next to each other for reassurance. But there are bizarre details indicating that Paris was not at all the same as before. The lack of cars made it a silent city – a silence that revealed the rustling of trees, the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves, the noise of the crowd’s footsteps and the hum of voices. In the silence of the streets and of the black-out imposed at around five o’clock in winter, during which the slightest light from windows was forbidden, this city seemed to be absent from itself – the city ‘without eyes’ as the Nazi occupiers used to say. Adults and children could disappear without trace from one moment to the next, and even among friends, nothing was ever really spelled out and conversations were never frank because of the feeling of menace in the air.”

“Young Once,” takes place in the afterimage of the occupation; but this time casts a long deep shadow, particularly through the repetitive mention of the Vélodrome d'Hiver, where Louis’s father was a bicycle racer of some noticeable renown. For the uninitiated, however, the Vélodrome d'Hiver – colloquially styled Vel’ d’Hiv – was employed by the French police during the occupation, who under the orders of the occupying Nazi forces, rounded up Jewish people throughout the city to be held at the stadium, before being transferred to death camps such as Auschwitz. The majority of those being arrested and interned were women and children. This event became infamously known as the “Vel' d'Hiv roundup.” Modiano’s casual disclosure and inclusion of the name: Vel’ d’Hiv or Vélodrome d'Hiver, and leaving it to linger in the text with the implied menace and venom, ensures readers who are not familiar with the scandalous history will be inclined to look into it. Patrick Modiano, is a writer who does not spell it out for his readers. In this instance, it’s an implied understanding that they know; if they don’t, they’ll hunt for the information. There is some appreciation for Modiano to allow the barbs and shards of the facts to settle. What originally passed as an innocuous detail suddenly transforms into horrifying reminder of the past Paris and its wartime activities.

Regardless, “Young Once,” does not linger over the atrocities or claustrophobic horrors of the occupation. Its presence is atmosphere, summoned forth by such facts as the mention of Vel’ d’Hiv; or the notes in a police file; ultimately it exists within the context of memory. The novel itself, is told from the reminiscing perspectives of Louis and Odille, who at the novels opening, are set to turn 35, whereby both are resolute and resigned in their understanding this is the age which they say farewell to their youth, while embarking on something else. Maturation perhaps? Settled fruition? They never clarify what is next; all the while, they do not mourn the end of their supposed youth. The same youth, best encapsulated by the earlier quote from “Out of the Dark,” when Louis and Odille were but two abandoned youths, discarded in the world, whereby they were circled by otherwise more menacing figures. In the case of Odille, the term menace should be replaced by cruel or more fittingly, down right deranged and corrupted. Being used as bait by the police in a sting operation to capture a violent sex offender; then there are the routine sexual advances of a club owner, and a series of disingenuous apologies and regrets from music record executives, who would love to help, but Odille’s voice just isn’t in music fashion at the moment. Louis, while not assaulted or sexually exploited, finds himself under the wings of one of Modiano’s stock archetypes, the vaguely ambiguous criminal, or possibly criminal, whose crimes are never quite brought to light. They’re merely rumbling accusations. Echoes from the past.

“Young Once,” continues in the same vein and trope of Modiano’s work, by continuing to obscure, obfuscate, and vaguely circle the insinuations of something abhorrent or rotten at the centre, without every quite settling on it or revealing it. Patrick Modiano is a writer whose novels continue to explore what has become the endless liminal space of the occupation and the immediate postwar period. The vague grouping in the dark for answers which will never reveal themselves, is the pinnacle of Modiano’s style. Readers, who enjoy Modiano though, come back for the atmospheric qualities. The delight in being for a brief period disoriented and discombobulated in the unreliability of memory. “Young Once,” is yet another brush stroke in this grisaille canvas of incomprehensible ghosts and absence, or another chapter in a novel mapping out the endless hallways, doors and rooms of an archive, complete with filing cabinets and bookshelves spilling over, a deluge of undiluted chaos of mementos, both remembered and fabricated.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

António Lobo Antunes Dies Aged 83

Hello Gentle Reader,

Some writers are merely a part of the landscape. They are ubiquitous features. Ones readers routinely pass and cross over with. While there are others who are legendary. Pure forces of natures, which others aspire to. The Portuguese writer António Lobo Antunes was one such writer. Few writers come to mind today who could match or rival Lobo Antunes work in its singular vision and uncompromising execution, with the exception of a few including but not limited to: Krasznahorkai László, Mircea Cărtărescu and Nádas Péter. António Lobo Antunes was renowned for his masterfully modernist deluged polyphonic novels, which raged against fascism; confronted Portugal’s dark, brutal and violent colonial past; the horrors and atrocities of war, its unending inhumanity; the inevitable decay of familiar relationships as they slide further and further into dysfunction; while always providing a testament on the landscape of memory, existential loneliness, the fractured nature of the self, and a few filtrations with nihilism. There truly is no writer quite like António Lobo Antunes, who could do it at all, and do it competently. The literary style of Lobo Antunes will always be remembered as being difficult, who captured the disillusionment of 20^th century Portugal, in a late modernist prose that was frequently compared to Faulkner for its textual, grammatical, musical complexity and density. Needless to say, many readers were often put off by this description, viewing António Lobo Antunes as a high brow literary writer which would only alienate them. Though, those who were up for the challenge, their efforts were amply rewarded. When Jose Saramago was announced as the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1998, many critics thought the Swedish Academy had awarded the wrong Portuguese writer, favouring instead António Lobo Antunes, who would remain a perennial candidate and figure throughout the early 21^st century. Personally, I have yet to make my way to António Lobo Antunes, ironically attracted and put off by the reputation of his works density and demanding nature. Yet no writer has ever written more beautiful titles then António Lobo Antunes, which I hope are the product of the writer, and not the liberties of his translators. Titles such as the recently published “Midnight Is Not in Everyone’s Reach,” “Commission of Tears,” “Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water,” “What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?” António Lobo Antunes death marks yet another grand old master leaving the mortal realm. It is difficult to imagine any successor, which is perhaps for the best, Lobo Antunes shoes would be massive to fill; his shadow alone, has enough capacity to drown the indignant and arrogant writer who though themselves worthy enough.

Rest in Peace António Lobo Antunes, its more then deserved; your work will endure.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary