Tag Archives: Alia Trabucco Zerán

Man Booker International Prize 2019 Shadow Panel winner

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Longlist book stack2

#MBI2019

Man Booker International Prize 2019 Shadow Panel winner

Finally, the day has come to discover the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
This has been a wonderful experience for me, reading 12 books from all over the world, even though a few were quite awful, according to me. BUT some were also amazing.
As a reminder, here is where things were at the level of the shortlist:

2019 shortlists

And our Shadow Panel has voted and our winner is:

The Shape of the Ruins

Personally, I would choose another winner:

The Remainder

I’ll add here the official winner in the afternoon: it’ll be chosen in the evening in London, you can watch the event live here.

 

DID YOU READ THESE TITLES?
WHICH ONE WOULD BE YOUR WINNER?

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Man Booker International Prize 2019 Shadow Panel shortlist

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Longlist book stack2

#MBI2019

Man Booker International Prize 2019 Shadow Panel shortlist

This year, our Shadow Panel counts 11 judges. Everyone worked really hard and most judges read most of the 13 books featured on the longlist.
Here is the shortlist our Shadow Panel came up with:

2019 shortlists

As you can see, our Shadow Panel shortlist has 5 books in common with the official shortlist – just as mine also had 5 in common with the official list, but with a different 6th title.

This is all pretty similar.
This is probably due to the fact that the longlist was rather weak this year, without too many outstanding titles.
And as most the books were very fairly short, our team of judges managed to read a lot. I’m amazed I personally managed to read 12, in so few weeks.
“Every book was read by at least 8 judges, and most by at least ten (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was the only one with everyone’s score).

What next?
Our winner will be announced on May 21, a few hours before the official winner is announced.
NB: the book I would pick as the winner is on the official shortlist and the Shadow Panel shortlist!

If you want more details, come this way to read our chairman’s post.

DID YOU READ THESE TITLES?
WHICH ONE WOULD BE YOUR WINNER?

Man Booker International Prize 2019 shortlist

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shortlist

#MBI2019

The Man Booker International Prize 2019 shortlist was just announced a few minutes ago!
As announced at the beginning of March, I’m part of the Shadow Panel Judges (with these amazing people!) this year, and you can see I have reviewed most of the longlist titles!

The official longlist was:

Author (Original Language –Country/territory), translator, title (publisher/imprint)

  1. Jokha Alharthi (Arabic / Omani),  Marilyn Booth, Celestial Bodies (Sandstone Press Ltd) – READ
  2. Can Xue (Chinese / Chinese), Annelise Finegan Wasmoen, Love In The New Millennium (Yale University Press)
  3. Annie Ernaux (French / French), Alison L. Strayer, The Years (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  4. Hwang Sok-yong (Korean / Korean), Sora Kim-Russell, At Dusk (Scribe, UK)
  5. Mazen Maarouf (Arabic / Icelandic and Palestinian), Jonathan Wright, Jokes For The Gunmen (Granta, Portobello Books)
  6. Hubert Mingarelli (French / French), Sam Taylor, Four Soldiers (Granta, Portobello Books)
  7. Marion Poschmann (German / German), Jen Calleja, The Pine Islands (Profile Books, Serpent’s Tail)
  8. Samanta Schweblin (Spanish / Argentine and Italian), Megan McDowell, Mouthful Of Birds (Oneworld)
  9. Sara Stridsberg (Swedish / Swedish), Deborah Bragan-Turner, The Faculty Of Dreams (Quercus, MacLehose Press) – READ
  10. Olga Tokarczuk (Polish / Polish), Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  11. Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Spanish / Colombian), Anne McLean, The Shape Of The Ruins (Quercus, MacLehose Press)
  12. Tommy Wieringa (Dutch / Dutch), Sam Garrett, The Death Of Murat Idrissi (Scribe, UK) – READ
  13. Alia Trabucco Zeran (Spanish / Chilean and Italian), Sophie Hughes, The Remainder (And Other Stories)

The links send you to my reviews.
The titles in bold are the ones I haven’t reviewed yet.

Here is the official shortlist:

  1. Jokha Alharthi (Arabic / Omani),  Marilyn Booth, Celestial Bodies (Sandstone Press Ltd)
  2. Annie Ernaux (French / French), Alison L. Strayer, The Years (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  3. Marion Poschmann (German / German), Jen Calleja, The Pine Islands (Profile Books, Serpent’s Tail)
  4. Olga Tokarczuk (Polish / Polish), Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  5. Juan Gabriel Vásquez (Spanish / Colombian), Anne McLean, The Shape Of The Ruins (Quercus, MacLehose Press)
  6. Alia Trabucco Zeran (Spanish / Chilean and Italian), Sophie Hughes, The Remainder (And Other Stories)

Our shadow panel shortlist will be revealed next week.

Here is my own personal shortlist, with actually 5 out of 6 of the official shortlist.
So glad they didn’t keep any of the horrible ones!

  1. The Years
  2. The Remainder
  3. The Pine Islands
  4. The Death of Murat Idrissi
  5. The Shape of the Ruins
  6. Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead

The top two were really gems for me.
Three titles of the longlist were absolutely horrible, and I didn’t read Jokes For The Gunmen.

WHAT DOES YOUR SHORTLIST LOOK LIKE?