Summer reading special: take the Booker Prize... around the world

It’s said that fiction knows no boundaries – which is certainly true – but we’d argue that only a work of translated fiction can truly transcend a border. As the American novelist Henry Miller once said, ‘One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things’.

Translated fiction allows readers to travel thousands of miles in a single page turn - it offers windows into new cultures, connecting us through words in a heartbeat. But of course, all of this owes a debt to the translators - the shapeshifters of literature who traverse two worlds, deftly transforming one original language work into another.

Perhaps you’re grabbing your passport for an overseas adventure this summer, or simply planning a staycation. Whatever your holiday plans, there’s no better time to pick up a work of fiction from the International Booker Prize Library, so we’ve compiled a list that will take you on a literary journey around the world.

Set in thirteen countries and originally written in as many languages, these extraordinary works will transport you from the tranquillity of Norway’s fjords to the shimmering nightlife of Seoul, through China’s Cultural Revolution by way of the bustling metropolis of Buenos Aires, and more.

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes (2022)

Fernanda Melchor presents a dichotomy of life in provincial Mexico, where a gated community for the rich brings together two young men from either side of the divide. Polo, an impoverished and exploited gardener, works inside the compound where he meets Franco, an incel best described as an ‘overfed cherub’ who lives with his wealthy grandparents behind the protective bars of the development.

Paradais opens with the discovery of a body, a local woman. It’s an event in which Melchor anchors the plot, and, as news of the murder spreads and the investigation begins, locals must navigate the aftermath of the hideous crime. But this act of violence is not a one-off, and Melchor uses it as a springboard for what is a searing critique of the deep-rooted misogyny, high rates of femicide and cycle of violence which plague many marginalized communities in Mexico.

Melchor’s writing style is unique - she eschews page breaks in favour of drawn-out, rhythmic sentences that gallop poetically from page to page, gathering pace towards a climactic ending. There are many uncomfortable truths in this novel and set against the oppressive Mexican heat, it’s a stifling read. The TLS called Paradais a ‘contemporary masterpiece’, and the novel went on to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls (2021)

In a small town on the storm-battered coast of Norway, lives Asle, a widow. Not far away, in Bjørgvin, another Asle lives. Both are artists; their lives separate, but entwined. They are different versions of the same person - doppelgängers. 

A New Name: Septology VI-VII is the final instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology trilogy, a body of work about the intersecting lives of a group of people in his homeland. Fosse himself grew up on a small farm on the west coast of the country, and, whether intended or not, he imbues a connection to the land deep within his stories - the Norwegian sea and landscape providing an ever-present backdrop through his narratives.  

Written in Fosse’s signature style - wandering steam-of-consciousness prose that begins to feel hypnotic - this is a melancholic and soul-searching read, which questions the true meaning of identity. ‘Amidst a field of writers intrigued by the potential of religion, Mr. Fosse has created something of a different order: a work of art that itself approximates a religious experience’, The Wall Street Journal wrote in review of the novel.
A New Name: Septology VI-VII was shortlisted for the International Prize in 2022. Fosse and Searles were also previously longlisted for the first instalment, The Other Name: Septology I - II, in 2020. 

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd (2021)

Mieko Kawakami wrote Heaven with a 14-year-old boy as its lead because she was ‘tired of being called a feminist author’. Kawakami’s work to date has been unabashedly feminist, but the label itself irks her. ‘I want to be understood as a human writer’, she told The New York Times Magazine when interviewed early this year. 

Set in 1990s Japan, Kawakami’s 2022 shortlisted novella opens with a note passed between two teens, Hare and Kojima. Both suffer bullying by their classmates, with Hare called ‘Eyes’ due to a lazy eye, and Kojima called ‘Hazmat’ for being unwashed. ‘We should be friends’, the note says. An unlikely alliance is formed. Together, they navigate the challenges of adolescence, finding pockets of joy and safe haven in an otherwise brutal and alienating world.

Kawakami began her writing career unconventionally, as a blogger who moved into poetry then general fiction, and this poetic style is evident in her work - her writing is lyrical, sometimes delicate, when needed most. She writes refreshingly of a life in modern Japan, avoiding the overused ‘kawaii’ style tropes often lusted after by a Western gaze. There is no cherry blossom here, just the urban lives of ordinary people. 

Yet Heaven isn’t for the fainthearted: the bullying is violent, relentless. It’s a morality tale, one which is unusually nihilistic at times. ‘Kawakami never lets us settle comfortably, which is a testament to her storytelling power’, said the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (2018)

Olga Tokarczuk takes us to a secluded Polish village in the Silesia region of the Czech-Polish border, in her International Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

Set in the depths of a harsh Polish midwinter, the hunters of the village are slowly being picked off and an ageing activist who lives deep in the forest has turned super sleuth. She has a theory: the animals are fighting back.

Voice propels this novel, and in the cantankerous Janina, we find one of the most memorable characters in modern fiction. Tokarczuk’s prose burrows into your bones, much like the winter chill of the novel, capturing the beauty of nature for which Janina so furiously fights. This is an ode to the natural world, a fable that points a finger at human corruption. It’s part whodunit, part eco-thriller, embedded with a political treatise. 

Critically acclaimed, Tokarczuk was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life’. She also won the 2018 International Booker Prize for her novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft. 

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated by Roland Glasser (2015)

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country with a cruel past. In a short period of around 150 years, colonialism in the mineral-rich region led to instability, exploitation, widespread corruption, governmental theft, embezzlement, economic collapse, extraordinary humanitarian issues and civil wars. 

Naturally, the country is still shadowed by these abuses of power, and it’s here that DRC native Fiston Mwanza Mujila draws his inspiration.

‘In the beginning was the stone, and the stone prompted ownership, and ownership a rush, and the rush brought an influx of men of diverse appearance who built railroads through the rock, forged a life of palm wine, and devised a system, a mixture of mining and trading.’

He documents the picaresque lives of two friends, Lucien and Requiem, as they navigate a fictional metropolis, frequenting the jazz nightclub of Tram 83. Here, musicians, sex workers, miners, gangsters and politicians collide in a battle of anarchy and ambition, ‘in search of good times on the cheap.’

Through use of repetition, Mujila builds momentum - it is rhythmic and pulsating, a style that has been likened by many to the work of beatniks. His prose is poetic, sometimes frenzied. Longlisted for the prize in 2016, this is a riotous look at an underworld in which Mujila illustrates the continued complexities of the region.

Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang (2022)

Born in 1952, Zou Jingzhi came of age during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. His formative years were shaped by it, first as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager, exiled to the countryside. Ninth Building is Zou’s work of autofiction, an episodic memoir that he wrote ‘to let go of my childhood’, he told the Booker Prizes website when longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023. 

It’s a book of three parts, with each composed of a series of vignettes, moving from the perspective of a young child to ‘an educated youth’, as part of Mao’s regime. The opening story, titled ‘Eight Days’ and set within November in 1966, describes the desperation with which a group of youths vie for their Red Guard armbands. ‘We put on our armbands as soon as we emerged from the hutong. Our arms grew glorious, weighty. Only swinging them vigorously made them feel natural’. 

It’s not clear that they understand just what these bands signify. Yet despite the brutality of the revolution, to some extent, life went on. Zou hones in on this side of the Cultural Revolution that is often overlooked - the monotony and day-to-day tedium.

Despite this, Zou manages to find fragments of hope even in the darkest days. Told through gallows humour, he skillfully captures the complexities and contradictions of a time, offering a glimpse into a society grappling with adversity.