Josip Novakovich is a Croatian-American writer who now lives in Canada.
Novakovich emigrated from Croatia to the United States at the age of 20, attending Vassar, Yale and the University of Texas. He has published a dozen books, including a novel, April Fool’s Day (in ten languages), four story collections (Infidelities, Yolk, Salvation and Other Disasters, Heritage of Smoke) and three collections of narrative essays, as well as two books of practical criticism.
His work was anthologized in Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize and O.Henry Prize Stories. He has received the Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award and an American Book Award. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
He was shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2013.
Between 2005 - 2015, the Man Booker International Prize recognised one writer for their achievement in fiction.
Worth £60,000, the prize was awarded every two years to a living author who had published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language.
The winner was chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel and there were no submissions from publishers.
The Man Booker International Prize was different from the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction in that it highlighted one writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. In focusing on overall literary excellence, the judges considered a writer’s body of work rather than a single novel.