Shokoofeh Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive regime
The International Booker Prize 2020
The Dutch debut novelist Lucas Rijneveld, also a part-time dairy farmer, professed to be 'as happy as a cow with seven udders' upon winning the prize for The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchison
Rijneveld won with a dark novel about siblings, death and family disintegration. It was informed by their own upbringing in a Reformed church dairy farming family in the rural Netherlands. The author took six years to write the novel, which was partly inspired by the death of their brother when Rijneveld was three. Hutchison, who is English but lives in Amsterdam, has translated 20 books from Dutch and, ironically given The Discomfort’s subject matter, is co-author of a successful parenting book called The Happiest Kids in the World.
The Discomfort of Evening
Winner of The International Booker Prize 2020
- Translated by
- Michele Hutchison
- Published by
- Faber & Faber
Lucas Rijneveld's radical debut novel is studded with images of wild, violent beauty: a world of language unlike any other
The shortlist
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s joyful, hallucinatory novel is also an incisive critique of national myths and a requiem for the casualties of ‘progress’
Translated by Fiona Mackintosh, Iona Macintyre
In a brilliant, riotous tale full of macabre humour, Daniel Kehlmann lifts a jester legend from German folklore and puts him into the Thirty Years War
Translated by Ross Benjamin
Fernanda Melchor’s formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, written with a brutal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling
Translated by Sophie Hughes
A beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss from Yoko Ogawa, one of Japan’s greatest writers
By Yoko Ogawa
Translated by Stephen Snyder
Lucas Rijneveld's radical debut novel is studded with images of wild, violent beauty: a world of language unlike any other
Translated by Michele Hutchison
The longlist
The Enlightenment of The Greengage Tree
by Shokoofeh Azar
The Adventures of China Iron
by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Translated by Fiona Mackintosh Iona Macintyre
The 2020 judges
The International Booker Prize 2020 winner ceremony
The International Booker Prize 2020 for Fiction in translation was a live streamed event due to the lockdown restrictions of Covid-19. BBC’s Razia Iqbal hosted the virtual celebration and we hear from International Booker Prize Administrator, Fiammetta Rocco, Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, Mark Damazer, as well as Chair of the 2020 judges Ted Hodgkinson.
Watch the live reaction from the winners as Ted Hodgkinson informs them of their win, listen to their acceptance speeches and hear the comments from the other members of the 2020 judging panel, including Lucie Campos, Jennifer Croft, Valeria Luiselli and Jeet Thayil.
Screengrab from the 2020 International Booker Prize announcement as the winner is announced: The Discomfort of Evening by Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison, published by Faber & Faber
