Lucas Rijneveld 2020

The 2020 International Booker Prize

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's acceptance speech was delivered online due to Covid-19

The Dutch debut novelist Marieke 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, who uses they/them personal pronouns, 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

By
Lucas Rijneveld
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. Translated by Michele Hutchison.

The shortlist

Tyll

Translated by Ross Benjamin

Hurricane Season

Translated by Sophie Hughes

The Memory Police

Translated by Stephen Snyder

The longlist

The 2020 judges

The 2020 International Booker Prize - Winner ceremony

 

The 2020 International Booker Prize 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.

2020 International Booker Prize