books

Who is in the running for Man Booker International Prize?

May 18, 2015

The 2015 Man Booker International Prize recognises a living author's entire body of work. – AFP pic, May 18, 2015.Ten authors are contenders to receive the 2015 Man Booker International Prize on Tuesday. The biannual award recognises a living author's entire body of work.

To be elegible for the £60,000 prize (RM336,036), an author's work must be available in English. The Prize's first edition, in 2005, went to Albanian author Ismail Kadare, with subsequent installments honouring Chinua Achebe, Alice Munro, Philip Roth and Lydia Davis.

The 2015 finalists are a characteristically international group. Here is a look at each, including a selection of works and the judges' take:

Cesar Aira (Argentina)
Works: "How I Became a Nun," "Ghosts," "Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter"

The judges called his books "experimental, improvisionational, performative and dream-like" and said they speak to "the most ancient custom of storytelling as a way of passing the hours of the night."

Hoda Barakat (Lebanon)
Works: "The Stone of Laughter," "Disciples of Passion," "The Tiller of Waters"

The heroine of her novels, said the judges, is the city of Beirut: "She may be in ruins, elusive, moody, or even mad, but she is still the unrivalled bride of the Mediterranean."

Maryse Conde (Guadeloupe)
Works: "Heremakhonon," "Crossing the Mangrove," "Segu"

A preeminent Caribbean writer who reworks "memories that have been handed down the generations on fragile lines of communication, broken by slavery, migration, colonialism and poverty," say judges.

Mia Couto (Mozambique)
Works: "Sleepwalking Land," "The Tuner of Silences," "The Last Flight of the Flamingo"

Couto writes books of magical realism and political unheaval using language, said the judges, that is "precise and profound," weaving "legend, poetry and song."

Amitav Ghosh (India)
Works: "The Glass Palace," "The Hungry Tide" and "Sea of Poppies."

"His immersive feel for the past, its colours, tones and linguistic textures, brings to light the tales of those that the official records overlook...and gives them vivid new life," said the judges.

Fanny Howe (USA)
Works: "Come and See," "The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocations," "Radical Love"

The judges call her work "at once direct and offbeat," painting a "starkly realistic picture of contemporary America...shot through with fairy-tale strangeness."

Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya)
Works: "The Bleeding of the Stone," "Gold Dust," "New Waw: Saharan Oasis"

"In Ibrahim al-Koni's desert symphonies, the Sahara is the stage on which the drama of human struggle plays out," said the judges. "Reading al-Koni is a transcendental experience."

Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Hungary)
Novels: "Santantango," "The Melancholy of Resistance," "Seibo Down Below"

The judges noted the author's "extraordinary sentences, sentences of incredible length that go to incredible lengths, their tone switching from solemn to madcap to quizzical to desolate."

Alain Mabanckou (Republic of Congo)
Works: "Broken Glass," "Memoirs of a Porcupine," "Tomorrow I Will be Twenty"

According to the judges, Mabanckou "addresses the reader with exuberant inventiveness in novels that are brilliantly imaginative in their forms of storytelling."

Marlene van Niekerk (South Africa)
Works: "Triomf," "Agaat," "Memorandum: A Story with Pictures"

The judges call "Triomf" and "Agaat" two "immense masterpieces" that "chart in evocative, sometimes disturbing detail the aches and aggravations of political transition in South Africa."

The winner of the Man Booker International Prize will be announced May 19. – AFP, May 18, 2015.