Overview
- Organisers confirmed the six-title shortlist on Tuesday, March 31, naming The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran (tr. Ruth Martin), She Who Remains (tr. Izidora Angel), The Director (tr. Ross Benjamin), On Earth As It Is Beneath (tr. Padma Viswanathan), The Witch (tr. Jordan Stump), and Taiwan Travelogue (tr. Lin King).
- Judging chair Natasha Brown said the selection offers a “six-stop tour” of translated fiction and that the books “reverberate with history.”
- The shortlist includes two debuts and the first-ever Taiwanese writer to be shortlisted, with five of the six authors and four of the six translators being women.
- The winner will be announced at London’s Tate Modern on May 19, with £50,000 split equally between the author and translator, and each shortlisted book receiving £5,000 split the same way.
- The books span five languages and four continents and engage with power, exile, and survival across settings such as 1979 Iran, Nazi-era Europe, colonial Taiwan, suburban France, and a Brazilian penal colony, continuing the prize’s pattern of elevating work from independent presses.