Kadare, Oz and Mabanckou on Man Booker International longlist

Novels by Ismail Kadare, Amos Oz and Alain Mabanckou are included on the 13-strong longlist for the £50,000 Man Booker International Prize 2017.

Ismail Kadare, winner of the first ever Man Booker International Prize in 2005, is longlisted for The Traitor’s Niche (Harvill Secker), translated by John Hodgson. Two other previous finalists for the prize, Yan Lianke and Amos Oz, are also longlisted: Yan for The Explosion Chronicles (Chatto & Windus, translated by Carlos Rojas), and Oz for Judas (Chatto & Windus), translated by Nicholas de Lange.

Like Chatto & Windus, Maclehose Press, Fitzcarraldo Editions and Harvill Secker also have two titles on the longlist. From Maclehose comes Fish Have No Feet by Jon Kalman Stefansonn (translated by Phil Roughton) and The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (translated by Don Bartlett). Fitzcarraldo's Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer, translated by Katy Derbyshire and Compass by Mathias Enard have been longlisted, and Harvill Secker's War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans, translated by David McKay, joins Kadare’s The Traitor’s Niche as the publisher's longlisted titles

Titles from independent publishers include: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan NcDowell (Oneworld), Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors, translated by Misha Hoekstra (Pushkin), Black Moses by Alain Mabanckou, translated by Helen Stevenson (Serpent’s Tail) and Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated by Eliza Marciniak (Portobello Books).

Rounding out the longlist is A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen (Jessica Cape).

The longlist was selected by a panel of five judges, chaired by Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and consisting of writer and translator Daniel Hahn, novelist Elif Shafak, author Chika Unigwe and poet Helen Mort.

Barley, chair of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize judging panel, said: “It’s been an exceptionally strong year for translated fiction. Our longlist consists of books that are compulsively readable and ferociously intelligent. From powerful depictions and shocking exposés of historical and contemporary horrors to intimate and compelling portraits of people going about their daily lives, our longlisted books are above all breathtakingly well-written. Fiction in translation is flourishing: in these times when walls are being built, this explosion of brilliant ideas from around the world arriving into the English language feels more important than ever. ”

The shortlist of six books will be announced on 20th April and the winner of the 2017 prize will be announced on 14th June at a formal dinner at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

2017 marks the second year that this prize has been awarded for a single book rather than an author's body of work, with the £50,000 award divided between the author and the translator of the winning entry. Last year's winner was The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Portobello).