The official winner of the Man Booker International Prize was announced last night with A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen taking the £50,000 prize split equally between author and translator. The novel about a stand-up comedian going into meltdown on stage has been praised by the judges as “an extraordinary story that soars in the hands of a master storyteller” and “a mesmerising meditation on the opposite forces shaping our lives: humour and sorrow, loss and hope, cruelty and compassion, and how even in the darkest hours we find the courage to carry on.” Continue reading
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The Man Booker International Prize Winner 2017
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Man Booker International Prize Reviews: Part 1
The shadow panel members have been busy reading the titles longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Here are my thoughts about the first four books I have read since the announcement last month:
Yan Lianke’s novel The Four Books was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize last year and was one of the most interesting new discoveries I made last year. Translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas, The Explosion Chronicles follows three families – the Kongs, the Zhus and the Chens – who compete to turn their small village into a super metropolis. Lianke’s latest novel to be translated into English is another absurdist satire which criticises corruption, capitalist excess and China’s rapid economic growth with impressive detail and the way in which the story is presented as a history of the town as a sort of miniature account of what has happened to the country in general is done very effectively. Continue reading
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