Booker International shortlist spans not just globe but outer space Books on six-strong shortlist for £50,000 prize set in Europe, Latin America and space about an hour ago
As one might expect from a prize with a global reach, the six-strong shortlist for this year’s Booker International Prize for fiction contains multitudes and dazzles with its variety, translated into English from Danish, French, Spanish and Russian. Two are short story collections, one terrifying tales of magic realism set in contemporary Argentina, the other accounts of defining moments from the history of science. The novels tell of two Senegalese soldiers fighting for France during the first World War; the lives of the crew on a space ship in the 22nd century; an exploration of cultural and personal memory, based on the author’s Jewish family history in Russia; and a tale of rebellion against power and privilege set during the Reformation but inspired by today’s Gilets Jaunes protests.