2023 International Booker Prize judges announced

On August 16, The Booker Prize Foundation announced the judges for the 2023 International Booker Prize and declared the submissions open.

The distinguished literary award honours "the best single work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK and Ireland", highlighting works of fiction across all five continents.

Chairing next year's judges' panel will be Leïla Slimani, the French Moroccan novelist known for books like Lullaby (2016) and Adèle (2019), published by Penguin Books, Sex and Lies: True Stories of Women's Intimate Lives in the Arab World (Faber & Faber, 2020), and many more. Adèle, her first novel, focuses on a sex-addicted woman in Paris, and won the Mamounia Prize for the best book by a Moroccan author written in French.

Other judges include Parul Sehgal, staff writer at The New Yorker, Uilleam Blacker, the Ukrainian born translator who is one of Britain's leading literary names in the publishing industry; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times.

A prominent translator, Blacker has adapted the works of many Ukrainian authors into English, including Oleg Sentsov's short story collection Life Went On Anyway (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015). He has also written for The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Literary Review, among others. 

Eng's debut novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007 and won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012, and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2013. The Garden of Evening Mists, his second novel, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Currently teaching in the graduate creative writing programme at New York University, Sehgal previously worked as a book critic, senior editor and columnist at The New York Times, and is now staff writer at The New Yorker. She has won awards from the New York Press Club and the National Book Critics Circle for her work as a critic.

Studemann was a founding member of FT Deutschland, where he ran the features and weekend section. He joined The Financial Times in 1996 as Berlin correspondent, and since then, has held a number of roles across the paper, including Assistant News Editor, UK Correspondent, European News Editor, Comment & Analysis Editor and Assistant Editor.

"At the end of the prize cycle, in May 2023, [the judges'] reading and discussions will give them an unparalleled view of the new fiction from around the world, written in other languages that has been translated into English and published in UK and Ireland", Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize, has said. "Their recommendations should leap to the top of your must-read list."

A GBP 50,000 prize awaits the award winning book, to be split equally between author and translator(s). Shortlisted titles will also receive GBP 2,500 for the author and translator each. 

The 2022 International Booker Prize was awarded to Geentajali Shree's Tomb of Sand (2021), translated to English by Daisy Rockwell. 

Read a review of Tomb of Sand in the print issue of Daily Star Books tomorrow, August 18.