International Booker Prize 2026: French witch, sworn virgin make shortlist

Novels by women writers about a family exiled from Iran, a suburban French witch and an Albanian sworn virgin have made the shortlist for the International Booker Prize, organisers announced on Tuesday (March 31, 2026).

The prestigious award, to be handed out at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern gallery on May 19, 2026, recognises works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English.

The £50,000 (nearly ₹62 lakh) prize is split equally between the author and the translator.

This is the 10th year that the prize has been awarded in its current form. Organisers say the award gives the authors a significant boost in profile and sales.

Four winners have gone on to become Nobel laureates.

The books on this year’s list feature “unforgettable characters” and “reverberate with history”, said the chair of the judges, British novelist Natasha Brown.

The shortlist includes several established authors.

The Director, set in the Nazi-controlled film industry, is by bestselling German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann, who is known for darkly funny historical novels and is the only male author on the list.

Another prominent figure is French novelist and playwright Marie NDiaye, winner of the country’s top Goncourt prize, whose books have been widely translated.

Her novel The Witch is about a woman living in the suburbs in the 1990s who passes magical powers on to her daughters.

Brazilian Ana Paula Maia is author of seven novels and has been selected for On Earth As It Is Beneath, a horrifying tale of a brutal prison colony in a remote wilderness. Her translator is Padma Viswanathan, an Indian-origin Canadian-American writer.

The shortlist also features two debut novels.

The Nights Are Quiet In Tehran, a saga by German writer Shida Bazyar, is about a family fleeing Iran and then returning decades later.

The other is She Who Remains by award-winning Bulgarian poet and writer Rene Karabash, about a woman who opts to become a “sworn virgin” — a vanishing Albanian tradition under which a woman renounces marriage and lives as a man.

In 2025, Indian writer, lawyer and activist Banu Mushtaq won the coveted prize for her short story collection Heart Lamp, written in Kannada.

(With inputs from ANI)