With under a week until the International Booker Prize 2024 ceremony, we’re back with the second part of our deep dive into this year’s six shortlist books. Listen in to hear what Jo and James think of the remaining three books on the list, common themes that run across the shortlisted reads and which book they want to see win the award.

• Brief biographies of each author, and short summaries of each book
• Their thoughts on the three books books discussed in this episode
• The common themes running through these books
• Which book they think might win

Transcripts of The Booker Prize Podcast are generated using both speech recognition software and human transcribers, and as a result, may contain errors.

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Jo Hamya:

Hello and a very warm welcome to the Booker Prize Podcast with me, Jo Hamya.

James Walton:

And me James Walton. Jo, you had a cough last time out. Are you all right now?

Jo Hamya:

No.

James Walton:

It’s not cold.

Jo Hamya:

It won’t go away.

James Walton:

Okay, and you’re heroically going to battle on, are you?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, I might be. I’m really sorry to everyone. It’s so gross, especially if you’ve got earphones in or something, but I do cough here and there. I’ve tried to minimise it as much as possible.

James Walton:

Anyway, Jo, why don’t you do your thing and introduce us to today?

Jo Hamya:

Well, today we’re doing part two of our deep dive into the shortlist for the 2024 International Booker Prize, the Sister award of the original Booker Prize given for what in the opinion of the judges, is the best book translated into English over the past year with the 50K prize shared by author and translator.

James Walton:

Last time out, we did the three European titles, although we decided that was a bit crude in the end and we decided that they were the three archival history titles, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hoffman. The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson, and What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey. So in this podcast we move on to a Korean and two South Americans, namely Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell, and Youngjae Josephine Bae, Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott and Crooked Plough by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz.

Jo Hamya:

Quite a list. We’re going to start with Mater 2-10. James, you’ve got a mammoth task ahead of you. It’s by far the longest book on this shortlist, and it’s so twisty, it’s so complex, there’s so much history pattern to it. Can you give us a summary if you can?

James Walton:

Yeah, yeah. Okay, thanks a lot, Jo. So just summarise this as you say, longest book on the shortlist by some distance at a big old epic, before I try that, I should probably say something about the author because Hwang Sok-yong, born in 1943, and now 81, has a strong claim to be Korea’s most renowned writer, winner of numerous awards in his home country and published all over the world, is also a long-time activist who’s been in jail at least three times as far as I can see for his activism. Most notably in 1993, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for an unauthorised trip to North Korea to promote exchange between artists in the two Koreas, although he was released after five years on a special pardon by the new president.

As for Mater 2-10, well, my crude elevator pitch would be that it’s Salman Rushdie meets John le Carre, Jo. The Rushdie bit is that it’s a big sprawling family saga with plenty of magical elements and absolutely loads of storytelling stories coming out of its ears. This book and the le Carre bits would be, there’s a lot of spying, safe houses, undercover agents and people who identify themselves to each other by the Korean equivalent of, “The geese are flying low over Moscow tonight.” There’s one difference from le Carre, which we’ll come is on the whole communists of the Good Guys, maybe you should just say a quick word about the title, Mater 2-10 doesn’t appear in the book really, but as explained before it begins. It’s a sort of rusted train, which is now in the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas, sort of falling into it. So it represents, it’s a sort of symbol, it’s become a symbol of the divided Korea, which is important for the book, in the ways that should become clear.

So it starts with this guy Gino on a chimney, apparently this is common protest in Korea at least, certainly not unknown, apparently, a way of protesting in Korea against factory closures because of the wild capitalism of South Korea. As Hwang sees it, factories will close down, sack all their employees and move overseas, and one way of protesting is to climb onto high buildings, in this case a chimney where Gino in his mid-50s, a former factory worker protesting against the latest closure.

The first magical realism bit is that while he’s on the chimney, he sort of walks across fog to a house where his great-grandfather lived, and from then it sort of flashes back and forth between three generations beginning in 1910 when a Japan annexed Korea, and when I say, “Annexed,” completely made it part of Japan. Koreans were forced to build railways on land the Japanese had stolen. The longer the book goes on, the more repressive the measures become after. While they’re not allowed to speak Korean, if any Japanese are present and eventually Koreans, all have to take on Japanese names. Now this great-grandfather is called Baekman. He is a good craftsman and he works for the Japanese. Eventually on the railway he marries Hwangdaek, who dies when their two sons are quite young, but who reappears in spirit form or as a ghost to advise and sometimes save the family in moments of crisis, of which there are many. And their two sons are Ilcheol who marries one of the leaders of a strike, she has magical powers too. But he, Ilcheol largely keeps out of politics, comes a railway worker and eventually a railway driver with a Japanese boss.

But by contrast, his brother Icheol is a pretty much full-on communist. He forms book groups in factories to raise consciousness and generally spread the word, and this is where the le Carre bit cracks up. Ilcheol, the older brother has an old school friend called Choi [foreign language 00:05:11] who becomes a police informer and he’s constantly promoted until he ends up at quite a high-ranking hunter of communists. So there’s quite a lot of scenes where the communists will meet and identify themselves in their le Carre ways, then arrange meetings between people higher up in the party, with Choi hot on their trail, and if they’re caught, they will be ferociously tortured in ways that Hwang doesn’t spare us. A thing called a 24 hour rule that basically if anybody is picked up all of his comrades realise they’ve got 24 hours to flee because everybody breaks within after 24 hours.

There’s also some flat-out, properly exciting adventure stuff too with people jumping off moving trains and stuff. Almost James Bondy at times the period of the 1930s with the Korean Communist Party trying to build itself up, but it’s constantly torn between whether it should be a national party, Korean National Party or whether it should take orders from Moscow and Shanghai, particularly from the [inaudible 00:06:07] there’s quite a lot on that, I can’t deny it. But it does carry on through the Second World War and onto the defeat of Japan and liberation, except that as Hwang puts it, “Liberation lasts all of one day,” no sooner have the Japanese surrendered and the Soviets invade the north, and America arrives in the south and Korea is divided.

And then we finish back with Gino still on his chimney and more than 400 days. I won’t spoil it by saying how the protest ends, but I will say that obviously this is a massively truncated summary of a sprawling book. How did I do, Jo?

Jo Hamya:

You did so brilliantly.

James Walton:

Thanks very much.

Jo Hamya:

And I’m really relieved that it wasn’t me having to do that.

James Walton:

Thanks. We’ll just have a little clip from the film of Tobias Menzies reading from Mater 2-10. And to be honest, it’s a slightly random clip as far as it’s from where Choi Dayung before when he’s a police informer in happier days when he’s a pig farmer and has one particularly favourite pig.

Tobias Menzies:

“The pig who walked with a person just like a pet dog became famous all throughout Yeongdeungpo. And once folks of the market found out that the pig’s name was Pek Sun, they called out, “Pek Sun-ah, Pek Sun-ah,” whenever the two of them showed up, vendors offered sweet potatoes, squash, and whatever else the pig might like and clapped with joy upon seeing her happily feast on their offerings. If Pek Sun was full, she’d hold the food out to her father with her teeth and Choi Dayung would say, “Would you like Papa to save it for you?” This made the folks of the market burst into laughter.

James Walton:

Okay, Jo, after that slightly random bit of the book, what did you make of it?

Jo Hamya:

I don’t think it’s that random though. If you’re listening now, you should really hit pause and go watch to the end of that reading. You can find it on YouTube, you can find it on the Booker Prize website, but there’s this really heartbreaking turn. The pig’s fate is not positive, and I think it really sums up the really unexpected ways that violence sometimes, well often occurs in this novel, or weirdly imaginative ways in which violence occurs in this novel.

I liked it. I liked it a lot. I think out of our six books so far, I mean this isn’t saying much for a shortlist, this stellar, but it’s maybe slightly lower down on the pile for me. But I think this is maybe something to do with my own reading tastes and less to do with the book, because the way that you’ve sold it just now, James, is very different to how I read it and I’m going to be really boring right now because there is that trope that girls don’t read historical fiction, but I think was really sucked in at the point where it had more of the tone of an oral history, for example. Right? And of course, the various forms of torture that the Japanese enforce on these labourers are just like, it’s that really perverse kind of thrill, isn’t it? When you’re reading-

James Walton:

Yeah. Very honest of you to say, Jo, because it is true.

Jo Hamya:

But there were for me moments which broke the spell somewhat. Can I read you a passage that broke the spell for me? Passages like this, which in the midst of all these amazing bits of… Characters tend to have very long bits of dialogue where they explain their family histories and then come stuff like this, “Japan expanded its aggression from war against China to war in the Pacific and against the US with its attack on Pearl Harbour, activists saw this as a sign that the collapse of Japanese fascism was drawing near and began minimising contact with each other and focusing on their individual survival. Koreans were officially forced to change to Japanese names and basic commodities of all variety were subject to rationing or were requisitioned for the war effort. Koreans too were subject to conscription for battle, for labour, and for sexual slavery. Korean language newspapers and magazines were shut down, and even private secondary schools and private professional schools were put under the direct supervision of the Government General.”

So obviously what’s happening right now is very pertinent and I’m not diminishing the impact of what’s being said, but it’s the way that this book is sometimes written that feels like the spell of this incredible historical fiction is being broken, and it just sort of becomes a bit textual. Oh, “Textual” is the wrong word-

James Walton:

It does more or less abandon fiction from time to time, like in that passage. Again, boring male stereotype; I do quite like historical fiction, and I do quite like blokes telling me things about history. So I didn’t mind that at all. Towards the end, it gets quite propaganda-y in a way that will perhaps, and then I find it less convincing. But when it’s just saying interesting things like that, I’m sort of interested.

Jo Hamya:

I guess. This sounds strange, but there was a way that I related to this book that I told you about a couple of days ago, which sounds really weird, and it’s a bit like in our previous episode we were talking about Jente Posthuma’s, What I’d Rather Not Think, about the narrator in that sort of compares her grief to people in Auschwitz and the proportions were off. But there was this really unexpected feeling I had reading Mater 2-10, because so much of it is essentially about the importance of unions. And as a freelancer myself in a very precarious industry, I spent a lot of it nodding along going, “God, yes, I haven’t quite been taken over by Japanese colonial forces, but my job’s not that great either.”

James Walton:

Okay, no, there is no denying that. I mean, some of it is quite sort of Popular Front of Judea, isn’t it? There’s all these kind of little communist factions and a recurring theme of whether, as I say, the Communist Party should be domestic and Korean, or follow the line of the Comintern. So it’s constantly being denounced for factionalism or domestic expansionism by the Cominter, and dissolved, and then it reappears. And there is an awful lot of communist agents who go through enormous lengths to bring, sometimes real life communist figures together, which they think will sort it all out. And a weird belief in publications, so if they can just get together and publish the communists once a week, then everybody in the factory will become-

Jo Hamya:

Do you really find it weird? Because I thought it was so bang on. I mean, I would say this as someone who writes and who believes in the circulation of good, I say, “Literature” not to mean fiction, but just literature in general as a kind of tool against rhetoric and oppression. But I thought maybe it’s just because I very recently read George Orwell’s 1984 for the first time, at the big old age of 26, but I found it so vital, as opposed to weird.

James Walton:

Yeah, no, no, 1984 was vital, I think-

Jo Hamya:

But not trying to get a magazine published.

James Walton:

But not the communist, to hand around factories. I mean, this sounds a bit presumptuous to say about such a distinguished author, seemed to me a weirdly naive book really, in a way.

Jo Hamya:

You are going to have to back that up, James.

James Walton:

So Korean communism, when it got its own way, and it’s no doubt that he is on the side of the Korean communists in this book, when they got their own way, they ended up with North Korea. Now, would that not give you sort of pause for thought? I mean, I was very interested to discover from this book that for a while in the 1950s say, that South Korea might have been a worse country to live in the North Korea, though that might be Hwang’s sort of spin on it, but it isn’t now. I mean, one of the real life goodies in this book is a guy called Pak Hon-yong, who’s going to bring together the Korean Communist party and bring liberation to the masses and so on. But Hwang doesn’t mention that he ended up in North Korea, because he had to, because he was a communist, where inevitably in the 1950s he was executed as an American spy on trumped up charges.

Well, and also, I mean, it’s a crucial thing about this podcast, is it not Jo, that we don’t have to agree with the book to rate it? So the fact that I don’t agree with the fact that the Korean communists were the good guys, but I think towards the end, it does become straight propaganda.

Jo Hamya:

Oh, we’ve hit this point.

James Walton:

So I don’t mind the bits you read, which are just history. But what about this? So this is after the liberation or the disappointed liberation because the Americans have come and spoiled it all. “Though they hadn’t been at it long. What were the People’s Committees, the National Council and the Nationwide Federation of Farmers Unions all forming in the six short months after liberation, the Korean people had taken a huge leap toward building the independent nation democratic society of their hopes and desires. Having those hopes crushed by the US military occupation. So immediately after liberation gave the people a bitter education in history and the laws of social development. And despite the increasing pressure and oppression from the pro-Japanese forces intent on seizing political and governmental power with the blessings of the Americans, the people were not afraid.”

I’m surprised that it does all this, really, I still think interesting stuff about what they’re trying to build and everything, but not only is there no sort of satire about the Popular Front of Judea aspect to it all, there’s not even any questioning of it, really.

Jo Hamya:

Can I counter with Hwang Suk-yong’s own words in the afterword? Because potentially, maybe there’s a more kind of affective way of looking at this. So at the end of the book, this is actually amazing, we’re going to come back to this, but there’s a lot of extra text that you get with this book. You get a translator’s note at the beginning, you get an author’s note at the beginning, and you get an author’s note at the end, and usually I would find that really annoying, but I think it really works this time around. We’ll come onto that. But this is from the afterword. He writes, “In reading Korean literature widely over the years, I couldn’t help but notice what was missing, namely in both quality and quantity, short fiction has tended to outperform long fiction, very little of which in turn depicts the lives of modern industrial workers. Even the few works left behind by the colonial era, Korean Proletarian Artist Federation were mostly short fiction, focused on the urban poor day labourers or the Lumpenproletariat. So it’s not an exaggeration to say there were no full length novels that featured industrial workers as the main characters. Even among recent novels, most in this vein have centred on farmers. Over the course of my research, it occurred to me that it seemed only natural that socialism would become the ideological root of the labour movement under Japanese colonialism and beyond.

After liberation and national division, workers who fought for their right to live were denounced as communists. Then after the Korean War and the onset of the Global Cold War, all labour movements were seen as seditious during the decades of developmental dictatorship that followed. While undergoing our long period of vision, it had never been easy to argue for North Korea’s national legitimacy. Meanwhile, the people of South Korea gained their legitimacy through the blood, sweat, and tears they shed in the process of becoming the subjects of modernization, achieving industrialization, and establishing a democratic system.”

James Walton:

Well, yeah, I’ll give him some of that, rather generously, the bit where he says, “They were denounced as communists,” we’ve just read a 500 page book in which they are communists, so it’s not a mad denunciation. I’m slightly majoring on the politics of it, which is it’s sort of driving force in a way, but missing out is on the rather blistering storytelling for most of it, the straight propaganda stuff about the people and so on, that’s really only about the last 60 odd pages.

Jo Hamya:

This is very interesting, we’re going to come on to a very similar theme in Crooked Plough towards the end where we’ll talk more about this, but a similar thing happens where there’s a kind of-

James Walton:

Widening out isn’t the-

Jo Hamya:

Or widening out a kind of, you might call it propaganda, James, but do you think that maybe this is your preference, or maybe a slight bias against modes of fiction that begin proselytising, for want of a better word?

James Walton:

I mean, possibly. Possibly. Of course I will. I have biases; I’m not a steely objective reader at all, but I do think that when this novel is at, its sort of Rushdie-like best, it’s an amazing family saga with lots of magic, as I say, stories that may be too complicated to go into now, but that are a rattling, I mean, they’re really good read. I normally make loads of notes for these things, but for this book-

Jo Hamya:

You’re just reacting.

James Walton:

After a while I thought, “I’m spoiling this if I’m stopping every paragraph to jot down” and I just let it sweep me away, which it did for most of the time. But I do think that when it stops to say, as I say, just abandons all fiction and just makes some sort of propaganda-y points, it loses energy, it loses oomph, and I think that’s the problem.

Jo Hamya:

Maybe it just sort of depends on the reader’s politics?

James Walton:

I mean, I don’t think so. As I say, I’m working hard to say that it’s a big thing for both of us, isn’t it, Jo? That just because you disagree with the book doesn’t mean you don’t like it or you dismiss it.

Jo Hamya:

Or that it’s bad, yeah.

James Walton:

Or that it’s bad? No, not at all.

Jo Hamya:

We don’t believe in that here.

James Walton:

So I’m saying I do disagree with it, but I quite enjoyed the argument [inaudible 00:19:24]. But I do think it loses energy when it becomes just like some bloke outside a tube station with a socialist worker, a bit.

Jo Hamya:

I think maybe you are not giving it enough credit, but I do want to come back to this idea of the book washing over you and join it with the idea of-

James Walton:

Not washing over me, sweeping me along.

Jo Hamya:

Oh, sorry.

James Walton:

That is different, definitely.

Jo Hamya:

Very, very sorry, James. This idea of the book sweeping you along, and join it with the translator’s note that I mentioned earlier. I think actually since the International Prize is in part prize for translation as well as for the text itself, it’s really, really interesting to have this note at the front from Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae. I found it fascinating. It’s quite long for a translator’s note, and essentially what they’re both saying is that when they set out to translate Mater 2-10, they started out with the mentality that most or apparently they think most translators have, which is to make it as simple and accessible to an Anglophone audience as possible. But then comes this moment where they say, “But it was somewhere around when the characters were forced to change their names and conform to Japanese ways that the hidden violence of translation became more apparent. If a story is not just about the survival of a nation, but about the survival of the common people of that nation, the ones most often trod upon, then what does it mean for a translation to erase the markers of that nation’s culture, of these people’s identities? When a novel’s characters are ordered by their Japanese bosses to change their names on the spot because Korean is too difficult to pronounce, what is the English translator’s duty?”

And to that end, they kind of run through all the various ways, you mentioned that some characters have multiple names-

James Walton:

And also family titles.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, family titles.

James Walton:

In Korean.

Jo Hamya:

Schools have more than one name, according to who’s occupying them or building them.

James Walton:

And Korea’s not called Korea for most of the book either. It’s-

Jo Hamya:

Oh, wait, hold on. So Korea’s not called Korea for a lot of the book. It’s called either [foreign language 00:21:39] or [foreign language 00:21:40]. So it’s a really interesting way, it’s literally the first thing you read in the book, and it’s a really, really interesting way to start.

James Walton:

See, Jo, you are definitely more high-minded than me because when I read that translator’s notes, I thought, “Oh God.” And in fact, it talks about decolonising the language, and in ways that might be challenging to the reader, and I was going to actually say to our listeners, “Don’t be put off by the translator’s note. It’s like a sort of dragon guarding the cage.”

Jo Hamya:

I think it’s such a good translator’s note.

James Walton:

So I read the translator’s note and thought, “Oh God, this is going to be a tough read. I mean, it’ll be authentically Korean, but God, it’ll be a tough read.” And in fact, it just isn’t. For such a long book, I mean, he does basic courtesies of an author actually, which is, because dozens of characters, he reminds you of who they are all the time. So it’s actually very easy to follow and for much of the time, a properly, I think, exciting read.

Jo Hamya:

So I arrived at the more or less same conclusion via a different route, same as ever, James; we’ve got two different ways of looking at the same thing. But I think there is a way that having that translator’s note at the beginning, and that kind of awareness changes the way you engage with the text. I did not let it sort of sweep me away, by which I mean, I was stopping a lot to kind of look things up or to remind myself of what meant what, and who was, and the significance of various prefixes and suffixes, etc. But it felt like honest work, James. It felt like really good work, and it also gave me this very strange awareness that you can go ahead like you do, James, and just kind of, I guess get it by osmosis, but it’s really interesting reading a thoroughly 20th century piece of historical fiction with an iPhone because it just augments… I had Google Translate open next to me and it was a strange book to… I usually don’t read it with my iPhone in hand.

James Walton:

That’s interesting, that translation bit. Just one last thing, because obviously it’s very difficult when this is your work, but for the average reader, is this book too long?

Jo Hamya:

That’s a really good question.

James Walton:

That’s another way in which I thought it might’ve been a bit Salman Rushdie in the sense that it’s been a while since anyone said to Salman Rushdie, “You need to lose 100 pages here, mate.”

Jo Hamya:

I don’t think so, actually. Personally speaking, I’m much more a fan of the short form, the novella, even, James, but I think it earns its length. I really do.

James Walton:

But there’s one too many, or a few too many communists meeting of the communists to form a genuinely Korean Communist Party-

Jo Hamya:

But he’s embarking on this entire project of restoring a voice. It’s warranted, and I’m really scared that saying it’s too long is kind of too close to a kind of anti-intellectualist.

James Walton:

Which you’re very nervous about. No, I don’t mean it like that, I just mean does it repeat itself a bit towards the end? Let’s move on to our second book today.

Jo Hamya:

We move on to the shortest book on this short list. It’s Not a River by Selva Almada translated by Annie McDermott. I still don’t know. We’re going to do our whole thing of who we think should win and who might win, et cetera at the end. But the more I think about this, the more convinced I am that Not a River is my favourite on this entire short list. It is a very, very cool 93 pages long, but it packs so much in Selva Almada has written 10 books, but only four of them have been translated into English, which makes me very, very mad because I feel like I’m hooked. She was born in Argentina and is also a poet and a sometimes screenwriter. This, I was actually quite surprised to find out maybe not so much the screenwriting, but the poetry because the style of Not a River is… Well in the first place, I couldn’t believe that it was written by a woman, which is-

James Walton:

No, I know what you mean when it comes to [inaudible 00:25:43].

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, there’s something very Hemingway about it. It opens out on our three kind of main characters or the two more very important ones drop in later in the book, Enero, El Negro and Tilo, who have gone to the jungle to fish, but also to reminisce, which is a great rhyme because in fact, Tilo is the son of Eusebio Enero and El Negro’s former friend, who has drowned. And I think the novel does this really great job of pacing you in sort of just the right tone and speed to find out, under what circumstances and why. And so they’re in the jungle, there’s this very kind of tense, hostile atmosphere from the locals. One of the very first things that this trio of men do is shoot a stingray three times. Three times as excessive, and then they hang it up on the trees to dry out, but really, it just goes rancid, so they throw it back in the sea. And this, I suppose, is a kind of form of violence upon the land and upon, I guess the local sensibilities.

James Walton:

Yeah, the local guy, Aguero is definitely not best pleased, is he?

Jo Hamya:

They sleep in the jungle, they smoke, they talk, and at a certain point, Tilo and Enero, I think, go into town where they meet two sisters, Mariela and Lucy, whose presence in the book, it becomes quite broad. In fact, their presence in the books is what made me realise that the timeline of the entire novel or novella really was not linear in a way.

James Walton:

No, first it looks, it’s rather orthodoxly, going backwards, if that’s a word, backwards and forwards in time. So they’ll remember being kids, the main characters, and then we’ll come back to the present day, but then it gets a bit weirder than that or more mysterious than that anyway.

Jo Hamya:

I suppose this might be a kind of plot line, but what happens to Mariela and Lucy is essentially a kind of great reframing of Eusebio’s fate. So with all that being said, I think we should hear a clip from one of our actor readings. It’s performed by David Johnson, who has just possibly the smoothest voice I’ve ever heard in my life. And it goes into Eusebio’s fate, and how his friends dealt with it versus how the police dealt with it.

David Johnson:

When Eusebio went missing, it was the divers who found him, the river is as thick as tar. You can’t see a thing underwater. The men have to search by field. Enero wanting to help the islanders wanting to help, but no.

“Leave to the experts. You guys has your chance to find him,” said the officer. The reproach, or explanation or both hung in the air. “Time for the people who know what they’re doing to take over” was what he meant, but not what he said. And Enero got angry. It was like he was blaming them. How could the officer understand how many, he didn’t even know them? When he didn’t know Eusebio? When he had no idea how close they were? When he had no idea that if one of them went, he took a part of the other with him.

James Walton:

Yeah, that is really good. And I must say, Jo, I agree with your verdict on this book, not necessarily the verdict, it’s definitely the best of the six, but it’s pretty much up there. I always promise you a few tales from granddad-

Tobias Menzies:

Go on.

James Walton:

But in the 1980s there was a thing called Dirty Realism became sort of popular in Granter Magazine, and it was based on Hemingway, or drew on Hemingway, I think. And it was sort of men doing manly things, in quite significant landscapes, in quite short sentences, quite clipped dialogue. I mean, exactly what this seems to be like when it starts. Richard Ford came out of that, if people know him, Raymond Carver was the godfather of it. But then you realise not only is it not Dirty Realism, it’s not realism at all. I mean, there is no avoiding the overused word about books, but I mean in this case, it’s just what it is; it is dreamlike. I mean, it’s dreamlike also in the sense that dreams seem quite realistic when they start, and it only gradually do you realise, “Oh no, this is a much odder book than it seems.”And that oddness cranks up and it becomes increasingly sinister, increasingly mysterious.

I mean, one of the things that we generally, I don’t think, “Argue” is too strong a word about, is I’m all normally all for books that… I think almost the main duty of an author is to make sure what’s going on. And in this book, you don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t mind at all because that’s sort of the point. It’s is mysteriousness. I mean, there’s some bits that resolve themselves on a second reading, which have been a book of, again, I’m never normally in favour of that, but 90 pages, come on, you can do a second reading of that and things do fall into place, but even then it remains mysterious in a way that feels completely authentic. It feels like an author knowing exactly what they’re doing and having us exactly where she wants us, which is sort of disorientated, but with just about enough dreamlike. And I thought it maintained that, sustained that absolutely tremendously.

Jo Hamya:

And actually I have to take back what I said about, I think I said, “I can’t believe that a woman wrote this.” I can believe that a woman wrote this. I’m a good feminist. But that kind of very sparse, hyper-masculine style that the book starts out with these three smoking, pissing, fishing male characters gets broken up by the time Mariela, and Lucy and their mother are introduced, it gets completely flipped on its head. And all of a sudden, I do wonder if the beginning of the book is a kind of spoof of that masculine style because when these girls arrive, and I think they’re about 16, aren’t they? It’s not that the style changes, it’s just that it’s put into relief.

Because I think it’s one thing for a book in this style to read in this way, “The three of them men by then, not striplings, like Tilo now, men pushing 30, single no plans to get hitched. Not one of them had plans to get hitched. At least at that point, not one of them had planned to get hitched. Why should they? They had each other, besides Enero had his mother, El Negro had the sisters who’d raised him. Eusebio could have whoever took his fancy, why get tied down to one if he could have them all? And so at 30, the three of them in the sun, on the shore, their brains on fire, they left the dance at 7:00 in the morning, pretty hammered. “What’d you say we go fishing? Let’s do it.”“

And on it goes like that, and it paints quite a picture. It’s quite back-slapping. But then when that style gets applied to women in this novel, for example, Mariela and Lucy’s mother, it becomes something quite different. So there’s a point where Mariela and Lucy sneak out of the house. It’s quite crucial to the book, and their mother is not in the best of moods. And it goes, “Siomara was in one of those phases she sometimes went through when she was grouchier than usual, saying, “No” to everything and dealing out punishments and bans for no reason or because she could see how the two girls were growing, how little by little they were slipping away, how sooner or later they were going to leave her as well. She was afraid they might get pregnant or shack up with some bum. There was nothing she could do and it made her furious. That afternoon, she’d flown off the handle over nothing at all; unmade beds or clothes on the bedroom floor answering back or something else that didn’t matter. “Get out of my house, you little sluts.” And it’s still that kind of thumping rhythm and filthy language, but it’s so different in this context.

James Walton:

In what way too, because I’ve read reviews of this book because she’s, I think, one of Argentina’s most prominent feminists, the people just reaching for the phrase, “This is a book about toxic masculinity.” It doesn’t seem like that at all. To me, it’s far more sympathetic, and nuanced, and rich than that, I think.

Jo Hamya:

So why were these reviews arguing that it’s about toxic masculinity?

James Walton:

I think they thought Argentinian feminists, I don’t think just the kind of laziness of reviewers, I think. I mean there is some bad male behaviour in there. There’s also some bad female behaviour. There’s some rather tender moments between the blokes one bit where they sort of dance together by the fire.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, I don’t think it’s not a book about toxic masculinity, but I find the phrase, “Toxic masculinity,” so it’s become so trite at this stage that it just doesn’t mean anything anymore to me. But I think their bad behaviour is definitely pushing into relief by this family of women, Siomara, Mariela and Lucy. But at the same time, so much of their relationship, of El Negro, Enero and Tilo’s relationship in this book is founded on grief, that it’s quite difficult, at least the first two reads through even when you are clocking that they’re behaving terribly, it’s quite difficult to forget that they’re trying to give Tilo as nice time as possible because Eusebio is no longer around, and they’re reliving the joy that their dead friend used to give them, through his son. And that’s quite a lot, isn’t it? In 93 pages?

James Walton:

Yeah, that’s an awful lot in 93 pages.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. It’s actually, again, I said this in Episode One that I wish we could talk about all six books in one episode, but in part one we discussed What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, in which the narrator sort of meditates on her twin brother who’s taken his own life. And I would love a kind of side-by-side reading of Not a River and What I’d Rather Not Think About because they both do grief so well, and they both do this kind of slow procession towards the idea of death, so well.

James Walton:

No, it’s a terrific book, but because we can’t do all of them, should we move on to our next one?

Jo Hamya:

Yes. What’s our next one?

James Walton:

Our next one is Crooked Plough by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz. Junior is the youngest author on the shortlist at 44, and this is the only debut novel on the shortlist. He was born in Salvador-

Jo Hamya:

At only 44.

James Walton:

Yeah, no, I know. I know you’ve got two under your belt at 26, Jo, but think about-

Jo Hamya:

But no prizes though.

James Walton:

No. The thing about young novelists, is there could be young novelists way into their 40s, and he is the youngest one at 44. Only debut novel, born in Salvador capital of Bahia state in northeast Brazil. He has a doctorate in Ethnic and African Studies and has worked on land reform for the Brazilian government, all of which I mentioned because they’re relevant to this book. That’s because it’s set on the Agua Negra Plantation in rural Bahia. Time’s not exactly clear, actually, I read a review in an upstanding and much respected American publication, which suggest it was the early years of the 20th century. But it’s definitely not that because as television starts to appear and things, I think it’s somewhere ’60s, ’70s, or even that it’s kept deliberately vague because the idea is that Brazil only because of the last country in Americas to abolish slavery in the 1880s, but unlike in I suppose, America instead, there were these plantations where the descendants of former Black slaves became tenant farmers, and they sort of afterlife of slavery is quite long. Maybe that’s why it keeps the time vague.

But anyway, being tenant farmers means in practise they don’t have many more rights than slaves, of course. They work the land on behalf of rich landowners for no wages, and even the stuff they’re allowed to grow for themselves to make some money or to eat, can be confiscated at any time they’re not even allowed to have brick houses only mud ones. And then novel gets off to a really spectacular start, a fantastic start. Two sisters, Bibiana and Belonisia, who are about seven at eight at the time, find a knife under their grandmother’s bed, and they put them in their mouth and one of them cuts the tongue off.

Their father Zeca can channel and encandadas, who are the spirits, which he does to heal people and also in religious ceremonies. And then there’s a new arrival of their Uncle Servo with his wife and six children, including Severo rather crucially, who they both rather as they hit puberty, and for a while that causes a rift between them, but they make it up. And there’s no particular hard feelings when Bibiana bags Severo, who’s becoming increasingly politically aware of the injustice of plantation life, and persuades her to leave with him, something Belonisia is less pleased about. And that’s the end of part one, narrated by Bibiana.

Part two, narrated by Belonisia who, while they’re more educated sisters away, does go off to school, doesn’t really take to it, and prefers instead to sort of hang around with her father, learning about the land and the spirits and so on. She also, at first willingly, but not for very long, goes to live with an old guy called Tobias as his woman, and it doesn’t take a very long to realise that this is a terrible mistake. His hut is filthy, he’s tyrannical, she has a miserable time. And eventually, Bibiana and Severo return, now with four children. Severo, full on activist by this point, trying to raise the consciousness of the farmers. And there’s a lot of more dramatic incident from there, which I won’t spoil. And.

Then there’s the third and final section is narrated by an Encantada, Santa Rita the fisherwoman. And that has plenty of dramatic incident two, which I won’t spoil, but it’s a pretty action-packed book, really. But I can say that after being mainly the story of the family, the book widens out to be a more obviously political and pretty unmistakable denunciation of the whole tenant-farmer system.

Jo Hamya:

Yes.

James Walton:

Let’s have one of our readings though here. This is Antonia Thomas reading from pretty much the beginning of the book, that rather spectacular start where the daughters find a knife under their grandma’s bed.

Antonia Thomas:

“Belonisia squeezed herself under the bed and pulled out the suitcase, the peccary hide, covering the rough earth floor bunched up beneath her body. I opened the suitcase now lying before our eyes. I pulled out a few pieces of old clothing, mostly threadbare and others still quite vibrant, and made brighter by the sunlight of that dry day. A light I could never accurately describe. Among the disordered clothes lay something mysterious, covered with a filthy rag and it attracted us like a precious stone.

I was the one who undid the knot listening for my grandma’s voice, I saw Belonisia’s eyes catch the metal’s radiance as though she’d been presented with a gift, still glowing from the forge.”

James Walton:

And I did promise you a spectacular start. Jo, what did you reckon to Crooked Plough?

Jo Hamya:

Oh, I really liked it. I think actually, the more I think about it, the more it grows on me, and I think potentially one of the best openings to a book I’ve ever read in my life. And because you don’t know which sister is mute until the end of the first section, you’re in this very kind of strange state of tension. I really enjoyed in this book, I think, you were talking about the kind of narrative voice of each of the sections changing, but to me, this is kind of a very great way of setting up the way that history, I guess for want of a less grander term, usually gets told; by one particular person approximating the experience feelings of another.

And then we move to Belonisia’s point of view, which is I suppose a kind of, if I had to find a parallel sort of anti-colonial or something like that, Belonisia is, as you say, much more connected to the land than her sister. And she does go to school, but she gets really, she says at some point, “I got really tired of hearing Donna Laudres’ lies about our history.” She finds, is it bad if I say, “Hard to swallow?”

James Walton:

Oh yeah, she’s got no tongue.

Jo Hamya:

So we have this shift to a sort of a more, I guess, honest perspective of the country, and the land and the community. And then by the time we move into the final section told by this Encantada, by the spirit, there’s this amazing shift; so far, all of the book has been in the first person, and then gradually, it goes from first person to second and then to third.

James Walton:

She sometimes addresses the girls directly, doesn’t she?

Jo Hamya:

Yes.

James Walton:

The women as they are, by then.

Jo Hamya:

And to me it was actually kind of phenomenal. I didn’t notice it as it was happening when I was reading, but when I look back on it now, it’s sort of phenomenal, because it’s sort of like a reclamation of how this particular history should be told. And it was such a brilliant use of form. So I really, really enjoyed this book.

I did want to ask you though, and I’m scared to ask this question because I’m worried it makes me sound really bad. It’s brilliant, but did you sometimes find it a bit too on the nose?

James Walton:

Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up. Phew, thank you. Yes, I think that’s the elephant in the room. Yeah, I did. And increasingly so actually. So I thought at the first half, the first section and a half is terrific, and then he seems to slightly begin to not trust the reader, or maybe his degree in Ethnic and African Studies… I don’t know, you don’t want to kind of overdo the of why it happens, but it is just on the nose. In fact, even that bit you mentioned about Belonisia, she’s uneducated and everything, but-

Jo Hamya:

But she speaks for the people.

James Walton:

And she says things at one point, she’s worried about owners taking her crops if they’re good, but she says what a lot of people do is therefore just let them wither. She says, “I never let my crops wither on the stalk out of spite, but that would be disrespectful to the Earth.” And then I mean, Zeca, who’s the father, he’s a bit kind of Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, isn’t he? He’s absolutely maybe a bit too good to be true?

Jo Hamya:

Well, I mean, okay, I don’t want go too far into because we’re starting to make it sound really bad and it’s not. It’s definitely not.

James Walton:

Okay, but let me just finish because I think all of that you could get away with. And in fact, the book is so good and has built up so much goodwill that even when it starts to go a bit on the nose and to just not trust us enough, it’s still the book I’d recommend a lot. But towards the end, it dissolves into a series of author’s messages, I think.

So there’s one by Bibiana, a long speech by Bibiana, which has got too many spoilers to quote. But then her mother Salu is talking to the wife of the landowner and says, “”I birthed this land. Do you understand what I’m saying? This land lives in me.” She pounded her chest, “It sprouted it within me, and it took root right here.” She pounded her chest again, “Right here is where the land lives. I’m part of this land with all my people. Agua Negra lives in my heart, not on that piece of paper that belongs to you and your husband.”” Now too on the nose, is there.

Jo Hamya:

So actually that is not,

James Walton:

I mean, it’s-

Jo Hamya:

That, I actually really thought, I thought… We keep using this phrase, “Earned it,” but I thought partially because of the kind of change in narrative form that I was talking about earlier, I thought that was actually quite earned. I actually think it’s very rare that a statement that can come off in a novel, but I think it does to me. And partially, okay, the opening a book on a girl having her tongue cut out and the other having her tongue injured is brilliant. But then I kind of, as the book went on, I wondered whether it was very neat in a way, to have this mute sister on a former plantation. And now, it kinds of, you know. I don’t know it. It’s a really great parallel, but I think I read this after I read Kairos, and you wouldn’t think to compare these two books, I think-

James Walton:

That’s the one that’s at East Germany, isn’t it?

Jo Hamya:

Yes, we covered that in part one of these two episodes. But something I really appreciated about Kairos was that you get a lot of background on East and West Germany at the time, the politics of the time, the Soviet regime of the time, and the encroaching idea of Western free market capitalism, essentially. And it’s a nice parallel to the relationship, but it’s not a literal metaphor for the relationship. So it’s great; it’s just messy enough to leave you thinking, I guess. Whereas I like Crooked Plough a lot, but I sometimes felt that everything was so neatly packaged that I finished it and I was like, “Epic, awesome, but I don’t really need to have a prolonged period of thought after having read this.” Does that make sense?

James Walton:

Yeah, no, it does. I mean, it does guide us, but I think having said what I’ve said about the bits that I think are on the nose and everything, we are missing out because of the nature of this kind of conversation where we say, “What’s this book about?” We try and summarise it as best we can. There’s a lot of, not long after the tongue incident, a mad girl turns up with her sister to be cured by Zeca, and it’s just a great, great scenes. And there’s plenty of them that are sort of just about the life on this plantation. And there’s a lot of that. And this again, did fulfil the, as I understand the International Booker Prize thing of just opening a completely different world. So this is what life is like on a plantation like this in North East Brazil. And I think it paid, really due attention to the particulars, all of that before, maybe towards the end. That passage I read, I just wanted to say to the author, “Look, we know this now. We’ve got this now.” But the process of getting it through the stories is really terrific.

Jo Hamya:

I still think that actually, I mean, the thing about the final passage is that, there’s a point where you’re essentially being told the plot of the book all over again just as a precis. But I do think it’s so important that that happens because it’s sort of, this time, it’s being told the right way. This time it’s being told by the right kind of spirit. I was going to say, “Person,” but spirit and in the right spirit. So I don’t know. The more I think about it, I’d have to reread it to be sure, but the more I think about it, the less I mind. But this book I was reading is actually quite a runaway hit in Brazil, isn’t it? It sold over 70,000 copies, which if you don’t work in the book trade, that’s a phenomenal number. And I can see why. I can see how it would mobilise the people. Do you know what I mean?

James Walton:

Yeah. It sort of says the right things, but I mean, maybe occasionally towards the end, that tricky little gap between the righteous and the pious. But I wouldn’t want to go on too much about this.

Jo Hamya:

Amazing for debut, though.

James Walton:

Yeah, I know. And another thing we’re missing out because of the nature of a conversation like this of spoilers is there’s loads of really horrifying, brilliant, dramatic incidents that makes it a really cracking read. But you know Jo-

Jo Hamya:

We’ve got to decide.

James Walton:

I think we’re coming to the time when we’ve got to decide what we like the best. I think, as I said last time, I’m so glad I’m not a judge. Because I mean all of these books, I don’t want to sound like a corporate shill, a Booker corporate shill, but any of these books would be pretty worthy winners. And what would be the worthiest? You go first.

Jo Hamya:

All right, I’m going to say something potentially controversial.

James Walton:

Go for it, Jo.

Jo Hamya:

Right? I’m going to say, if you haven’t listened to part one of this kind of special on the shortlist, please do. After this one, we covered, The Details, Kairos and What I’d Rather Not Think About, and they are all, I noted at the end of that episode, oddly quite similar books. I loved all of them. I really did. But because they are so thematically and psychologically similar, in a way, I kind of feel like you could cut them out. It wouldn’t make sense to me to give What I’d Rather Not Think About the prize, but not The Details. And it wouldn’t make sense to give Kairos the prize. But not-

James Walton:

Kairos has got all that East German stuff in there.

Jo Hamya:

So maybe. Do you know what, I think I want it to be Not a River, personally, because achieving that in 93 pages, to me, is insane. It’s a ghost story. It’s a story about grief, it’s a story about masculinity. It’s a story about what it’s like to be a 16-year-old girl when your mother’s really pissed off with you. It’s a story about being in the bush-

James Walton:

Is this taking an autobiographical turn?

Jo Hamya:

But it does so much in such a supple and condensed way that it’s insane. But I think I wouldn’t blame the judges for giving it to Mater 2-10 because isn’t it just such a good Booker book, in a way?

James Walton:

We’ve got the absolute classic showdown really between a sort of very slim, dreamlike [inaudible 00:51:09] book and a big whopping, let’s face it, quite male book. Anyway, so what’s your favourite book on the list? It’s as simple as that.

Jo Hamya:

My favourite is definitely not a river closely followed by Kairos. I think you’re right; Kairos does have a good shot, but then there’s just something about your lack of belief in the ending, I think has broken my ability to see it-

James Walton:

Of what?

Jo Hamya:

Of Kairos.

James Walton:

It’s dragging on this. Yeah. Okay. As I say, the book, I think that gets better and better, the two books that get better and better are The Details by Ia Genberg, and Not a River, all the others to some extent, to either tail off or just become a bit too clear, both, particularly the political books.

Jo Hamya:

So what do you think will win?

James Walton:

Or what do I want to win?

Jo Hamya:

That’s a different question.

James Walton:

I have no idea what will win. I don’t know the judges well enough, and as I say, all the books are good. I would go for, yes, I think Mater 2-10, and I’m torn between that and Not a River as well. And I’m going to go for my favourite book being, I’ll go for Mater 2-10 then.

Jo Hamya:

No, we’ve done it again. We’ve done this very stereotypical thing when you choose the big historical novel, and I choose the tiny, was written by a woman-

James Walton:

To be honest, it was only to have a difference in a way; Not a River is absolutely terrific.

Jo Hamya:

I will be so impressed with you if The Details scoops it, because part of winning a Booker Prize is readability, because the judges have to read them at least three times.

James Walton:

And I think The Details doesn’t put a foot wrong, really, but whether it’s feet or as ambitious as the other feet in the book. Okay, let’s make a more conclusive one. Your favourite is, Jo?

Jo Hamya:

Not a River, by Selva Almada translated by Annie McDermott.

James Walton:

And my favourite is Not a River, actually. I’m going to come out to it. Yeah, Selva Almada is translated by Annie McDermott. You’re right, I’m going to break out to the big blokey sweeper, though I did like that too. I liked all of them, and it’s a terrific shortlist. And the winner will be announced, I believe.

Jo Hamya:

It will be announced on May 21st at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall.

James Walton:

But until then, please don’t forget the always helpful business of rating and reviewing this podcast, and maybe even telling your friends about it.

Jo Hamya:

Please do. And for more on this year’s international shortlist, including the six films of actors reading from the books, and much more besides, you can visit the Booker Prizes’ website. You can also follow the Prizes on X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. So until James and I have gotten ourselves all gussied up for the announcement of the 2024 winner, goodbye.

James Walton:

Goodbye.

Jo Hamya:

The Booker Prize podcast is hosted by me, Jo Hamya, and by James Walton. It’s produced and edited by Kevin Muiolo and the Executive Producer is John Davenport. It is a Daddy’s Super Yacht Production for the Booker Prizes.