The main applicants for the "International Booker" are determined

LONDON. The International Booker short list has six names left.

The brother of the main Booker was established in 2004. The first winner of The Man Booker International Prize in 2005 was named Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Graduate of the Literary Institute. Gorky, the Knight of the Legion of Honor lives now in Paris. Over 10 years, the rules of the award have undergone significant changes. The inclusion in the number of nominees of writers from any country, and not just member states of the Commonwealth of Nations. Transition to the annual award presentation since 2016. The abolition of bonuses for the author in the aggregate of the works he wrote. Admission to the competition of works written in different languages and published in the UK in English. Encouragement of high-quality translations by allocating a portion of the prize intended for the winner to the translator.

The first winner, elected by the new rules, may be any of the magnificent six. The most titled is Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk. The hero of his book “My Strange Thoughts” (A Strangeness in My Mind) - Istanbul Mevlut - witness the metamorphoses that occur with the country and city in which he lived for several decades. Pamuk clearly indicates his position regarding the tragedy of 1915 and the situation of the Kurds in his home country.

The remaining nominees are familiar to bookies to a much lesser extent. The most "dark horse" - Elena Ferrante (Elena Ferrante) from Italy. Absolute non-publicity, categorical unwillingness to personally communicate not only with the press, but also with the translator. Behind the pseudonym of the author of The Story of the Lost Child (The History of the Lost Child) can be a completely unexpected character. Ferrante rightly believes that readers need only books, and not the details of the biography of their creators.

Other award applicants are less mysterious. The Vegetarian (“Vegetarian”) Han Kang from South Korea talks about a turning point in the life of an ordinary family, when a quiet and obedient wife suddenly decides to make extreme changes. A General Theory of Oblivion of the Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa is a story about a woman who immured herself in her apartment thirty years after the declaration of independence of Angola. Chinese writer Yan Lianke returns with his “Four Books” in the middle of the last century, when intellectuals were driven to labor camps, depriving books, but allowing steel or wheat to be melted to exhaustion. A Whole Life of the Austrian Robert Seethaler about how to live after the death of a loved one, about loneliness and finding yourself.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru