It's the second big book prize announcement of the week! Here are the 13 books nominated for this year's International Booker Prize. A new video is up on my YouTube channel discussing all these titles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQELE_7QVU

I love that this award highlights the best new fiction translated into English and I've found so many new-to-me great authors through this award. With international relations in such a terrible and tense place at the moment it feels more important than ever to read stories of experiences and points of view from other countries.

These novels and collections of short stories were translated from 11 different languages and originated in 12 different countries. This year's prize has a good representation of stories from Asia which is hasn't always been the case in past years and it's wonderful to see. There are also a number of queer stories. There's also quite a BIG difference in page length! The shortest “Paradais” is 118 pages and the longest “The Books of Jakob” is 893 pages. Phew! I do want to read Olga Tokarczuk's new epic but I'm on the fence about her writing since I didn't get on with “Flights” but really enjoyed “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”.

I've currently read 4 books from this list: “More Than I Love My Life” by David Grossman, “Heaven” by Mieko Kawakami, “Love in the Big City” by Sang Young Park and “Elena Knows” by Claudia Pineiro. They're all excellent and truly worthwhile reads! I do hope to read all the rest of the books at some point but don't have much hope of finishing the list before the shortlist is announced on April 7th. Probably the next book I'll read from this group is “Paradais” since I loved Melchor's novel “Hurricane Season” so much.