International Booker Prize Shortlist 2021

The shortlist for this year's International Booker Prize has been announced. You can watch this video where I watch the announcement while discussing the overall list and each book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lZND1rC6uU

I have big mixed feelings about this group of titles. I just finished reading “At Night All Blood is Black” by David Diop and think it's an incredibly powerful story about the savagery of war and how it can rob soldiers of their humanity. “The Employees” by Olga Ravn is such an inventive sci-fi novel both in how it's constructed and the story it evokes about what it means to be human. The short stories in “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed” are quite inventive but rely too much on gimmicks and twists which end most of the stories. I appreciated its imaginative invocation of the supernatural but, on the whole, it didn't entirely work for me. 

Most surprising to see here is “The War of the Poor” which is the most disappointing book I've read so far this year. I didn't feel it went into enough depth on the subject matter or the individual it focused on. I am really interested and eager to read both “In Memory of Memory” by Maria Stepanova and “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut. So I'm looking forward to getting to those over the next few weeks before the winner is announced on June 7th. I have to say I'm very disappointed the incredible novel “Minor Detail” by Adania Shibli isn't on this shortlist, but that's the way prize lists go! 

Have you read any from this list? Are you eager to read any? Let me know your thoughts on any of these books or the list as a whole. 

International Booker Prize Longlist 2021

I follow a lot of book prizes but the longlist of last year's International Booker Prize was the most enjoyable and interesting that I read. Last year's winner “The Discomfort of Evening” wasn't a personal favourite, but many other books up for the prize were among the best that I read in 2020 and I love that the prize helped me discover many new authors I've not read before. So I'm very excited to see the thirteen books that have been listed for this year's award. These are touted as the best books translated into English from the past year. They primarily come from European countries but some also originated in Argentina, China, Chile, Kenya and Palestine. Though they span many countries and historical periods something that connects a lot of these books is the way many blend form and genre to tell a unique story. Some combine fiction with memoir, history, travel, essay and poetry. I find this kind of innovation and diverse storytelling really exciting so I'm looking forward to reading many from the list. 

Currently I've only read three of these books. “Minor Detail” by Adania Shibli was one of my top books that I read last year. It's such a powerful, artfully-written novel so I'm thrilled to see it get even more prize attention as it's already won an English PEN Award and was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Unfortunately, “The War of the Poor” really didn't work for me as it felt like little more than an extended wikipedia entry about a fascinating 16thcentury historical figure. Vuillard is a highly respected writer and there are many positive reviews of this book so I was surprised to find it so disappointing and slight. However, it's thrilling that the inventive sci-fi novel “The Employees” is listed because this collection of testimonies from human and humanoids that work on a spaceship that discovers strange objects on an alien planet is such a pleasurable and thoughtful novel. It's also great see such an exciting and relatively new publisher Lolli Editions getting attention. 

The shortlist will be announced on April 22nd and the winner will be announced on June 2nd so it will be interesting to follow which books progress forward in the competition. Several of these books I've not heard of before so I'm glad this longlist will introduce me to new writers and publications I wouldn't have found otherwise. I'm looking forward to reading them as well as joining in all the public discussion about them. You can watch me give summaries of each book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBlCQD_El2M

Which ones are you keen to read? 

The Employees by Olga Ravn (translated by Martin Aitken)

The recent pandemic has caused many people to be furloughed or forced them to change their careers. So it feels especially poignant now to contemplate the degree to which our work defines us and expresses who we are as individuals. “The Employees” by Olga Ravn is a very thoughtful and artfully-written science fiction novel that speaks a lot about this subject through a future-set fantastical point of view. I'm hesitant to filter everything I've been reading lately through the events of the past year, but how we read is often reflective of our states of mind and so I'll naturally have a slanted experience of what I'm reading in response to how the pandemic has consumed my recent life and effected the entire world. This book's relatively new publisher Lolli Editions has also been intimately concerned with the effects of the pandemic as one of their first publications was the anthology “Tools for Extinction” which gathered writers' responses to the pandemic from around the world. Of course, Olga Ravn couldn't have anticipated this reading of her novel because the book was first published in Danish in 2018. Nevertheless, I found a lot of relevancy in how the human and (robotic) humanoid employees of the Six-Thousand Ship discuss their approach to labour in relation to their essential purpose for being. This short novel is composed of over a hundred brief statements given by the ship's crew in relation to some evocative and mysterious objects gathered from a distant planet as well as their perspective about a growing crisis aboard the ship. 

Given the limited resources of a spaceship every human must fulfil an essential purpose. Equally, the humanoids were literally created to perform a necessary function. Yet their interactions with the extraterrestrial (living?) objects provoke them to question many things about their existence including whether their work defines them and what it means to be human. In some of the statements we're told whether the speaker is human or humanoid. In others the speaker seems to have forgotten or become confused about whether they are organic or manufactured. Some feel a more secure sense of self knowing they provide a useful contribution. Others feel enslaved by the tedious obligations they must perform. It's so evocative and playful how their interactions with the curious objects which emit different scents or light provoke the employees to contemplate their positions more deeply. They inspire memories or sensuous feelings which had previously been dormant. It has a liberating effect for many including one humanoid who declares “I may have been made, but now I'm making myself.” These are issues reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's classic novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” but Olga Ravn approaches these subjects from a highly original perspective.

As the testimonies progress we become more aware of the bureaucratic force behind these interviews and the mystery surrounding a certain cadet being removed. We also get a sense of an individual named Dr Lund who invented the humanoids. These larger plot points form an overarching narrative behind the individual points of view with their subjective concerns. Naturally, this style of storytelling gives a limited perspective as we only get very small pieces of the story from different human and humanoids. I longed to know more about some of their lives such as a human that forms a strong bond with a humanoid who eventually disengages from further personal contact. Nevertheless, I enjoyed their contrasting voices and felt together this complex network of employees make interesting psychological, sociological and philosophical points. This is a very thoughtful novel but one which also delivers doses of immediate pleasure with it's imaginative take on space exploration.