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Lisa Appignanesi to chair Man Booker International Prize
Novelist and cultural commentator Lisa Appignanesi OBE will chair the judges for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, it has been announced, as submissions for the 2018 prize open.
The panel of judges, revealed today (18th July), includes Appignanesi in the role of chair, plus translator Michael Hofmann, novelist and essayist Hari Kunzru, novelist and short story writer Helen Oyeyemi, and journalist and critic Tim Martin.
The 2018 judging panel will be looking for "the best" work of translated fiction, selected from entries published in the UK between 1st May 2017 and 30th April 2018.
Next year will mark the third of the "evolved" Man Booker International Prize, in which the author and translator of a single work are awarded an equal share of the prize pot.
The 2017 prize was won by Israeli author David Grossman and his translator Jessica Cohen for A Horse Walks into a Bar (Jonathan Cape), with the £50,000 prize was split equally between author and translator. In the three weeks following the win, the paperback of A Horse Walks Into a Bar sold 20,000 copies.
Appignanesi, chair of the judges for 2018, commented: “The Man Booker International is one of my great favourites amongst our panoply of prizes. I’m thrilled by the adventure of setting out to read the best of our fiction in translation - fiction that navigates foreign seas, charts different ways of life and other ways of seeing. Fiction, too, in which a conversation between writer and translator can be divined. I’m honoured to be chairing a panel of formidable writers, critics and translators and I’m anticipating our literary discussions with delight.”
Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the Man Booker International Prize, added: “The judges of the 2018 Man Booker International prize are united by their love of the written word, by their curiosity about how the novel can transcend boundaries and by a deep appreciation for the creative work done by literary translators today.”
The “Man Booker Dozen” of 12 or 13 books will be announced in March 2018 and the shortlist of six books in April 2018. The winner of the prize, sponsored by Man Group, will be announced in May 2018.
