The 13 nominated books are: 
 

• The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin, published by Scribe UK
• We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers, published by Harvill  
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay, published by Scribe UK
• The Deserters by Mathias Énard, translated from French by Charlotte Mandell, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Small Comfort by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson, published by Wildfire
• She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel, published by Peirene Press
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin, published by riverrun
• On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan, published by Charco Press
• The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre, translated from Italian by Antonella Lettieri, published by Foundry Editions
• The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump, published by MacLehose Press
• Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh, published by Penguin International Writers
• The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, published by Viking
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Taiwanese Mandarin by Lin King, published by And Other Stories 

The longlisted books feature, among many other memorable characters, a queer Argentinian conquistador, a morally compromised German film director, a ‘sworn virgin’ who renounces womanhood, a child-star-turned-thief, a Japanese novelist with a monstrous appetite, an idiosyncratic Italian aristocrat, and a Danish noblewoman accused of sorcery. They transport readers from a brutal prison colony in the Brazilian wilderness to an Albanian village ruled by ancient laws, from an asylum for traumatised soldiers in Belgium to an abundant garden on the outskirts of Tehran. 

There are elements of magical realism (Women Without Men) and metafiction (Taiwan Travelogue). There are books about murder, mathematicians, motherhood, magic, money and much more. There are dark fairy tales and bittersweet love stories; experiences of revolution and exile, of the creation of art and the abuse of power; explorations of our capacity to endure and to reinvent ourselves; and books to inspire hope and resistance in challenging times.  

Themes range from warfare (The Deserters) to witchcraft (The Wax Child), from trauma (The Remembered Soldier) to transformation (We Are Green and Trembling), and from female resilience (Women Without Men) to male cruelty (On Earth As It Is Beneath). Set across continents and centuries, they use our collective histories to shine a light on our current preoccupations.  

Between them, the 26 authors and translators represent 14 countries and four continents, while the books are translated from 11 languages.

Two of the books were published in their original languages in the previous century. The Witch was published in French in 1996, while Women Without Men was published in Persian in 1989 – a gap of 37 years between original publication and International Booker Prize recognition. Another book on the list, Taiwan Travelogue, masquerades as a translation of a rediscovered text from a Japanese novelist in the 1930s, yet was first published – in Taiwanese Mandarin – in 2020. 

The longlist celebrates some of the biggest names in global fiction, as well as authors who are likely to be new to many anglophone readers. As well as three debut novels (The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, Matteo Melchiorre’s The Duke and Rene Karabash’s She Who Remains), it features six authors who have been nominated for the International Booker Prize previously (Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Mathias Énard, Ia Genberg, Daniel Kehlmann, Marie NDiaye and Olga Ravn), and seven previously nominated translators (Ruth Martin, David McKay, Charlotte Mandell, Kira Josefsson, Ross Benjamin, Jordan Stump and Martin Aitken).  

Five of the author/translator pairings have been nominated for the International Booker Prize before: Marie NDiaye and Jordan Stump in 2016; Mathias Énard and Charlotte Mandell in 2017; Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin in 2020; Olga Ravn and Martin Aitken in 2021; and Ia Genberg and Kira Josefsson in 2024. 

The list features authors who have won the biggest literary prizes in their own countries, including two French winners of the Prix Goncourt: Mathias Énard and Marie NDiaye – the latter was the first Black woman to win the award. Anjet Daanje has won the biggest prizes in Dutch literature, with one of her books selling over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands. Ia Genberg’s books feature regularly on Sweden’s bestseller lists, and she is a winner of the country’s top fiction award, the August Prize. The English translation of Yáng Shuāng-zǐ’s Taiwan Travelogue is already a prize winner, having won the National Book Award for Literature in Translation in 2024. 

The authors’ achievements extend beyond the world of books. Argentina’s Gabriela Cabezón Cámara is an environmental activist and a co-founder of the feminist movement Ni una menos. Bulgaria’s Rene Karabash is also a poet and playwright, and the winner of several international acting awards. Taiwan’s Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is a writer of manga and video game scripts. Olga Ravn’s novel My Work led directly to changes in Denmark’s maternity rights.  

In the 1980s, Shahrnush Parsipur was imprisoned for nearly five years by Iran’s Islamist government,without being formally charged. Soon after her release, she published Women Without Men and was jailed again, for her frank and defiant portrayal of women’s sexuality. The book became an underground sensation and was translated into several languages around the world, though it has been banned in Iran since 1989, along with all of her other work. 

Who publishes the books?

The longlisted publishers range from small specialist indies to the biggest international conglomerates. Penguin Random House and Hachette are each represented three times (with three different imprints each), while indie Scribe UK is nominated twice. 

Fitzcarraldo Editions, which published the 2018 prize winner, is longlisted for the 17th time. Foundry Editions, an indie publisher founded in 2023, makes its debut appearance on an International Booker longlist.  

Of The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, our judges said, ‘The pages pulse with heartache and humour’, while they described We Are Green and Trembling as being ‘at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging’.  

They said that the big question at the heart of The Remembered Soldier (a ‘superb novel’) is: ‘how far will humans go in order to love?’ and they described the language in The Deserters as ‘both raw and refined’, as it ‘weaves together two contrasting stories of hope and survival’.  

They felt that the writing in Small Comfort ‘zings in all the right places’, while She Who Remains is ‘an unforgettable modern fairy tale’. The Director, they said, is ‘a juggling act of wit and gravity’, and On Earth As It Is Beneath is a ‘stark, unsettling exploration of power and corruption’.   

‘Wonderfully evocative and packed full of plot twists’ is how they described The Duke, while they felt The Witch is ‘pure magic’. ‘The language in this novel is exquisite,’ they added. 

Women Without Men beckons the reader ‘into a world touched with fable and myth’, the judges said, and The Wax Child – a ‘haunting, gripping and singular novel’ – ‘cast a spell’ on them. Finally, Taiwan Travelogue was described as ‘both a delicious romance and an incisive postcolonial novel’.

In short, the 2026 longlist takes readers beyond borders and into exciting new territory. As Nilanjana S. Roy, one of this year’s judges, says: ‘Good fiction can take you to interesting places; great fiction takes you to places that are beyond the reach of maps.’