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6 books named finalists for the 2026 International Booker Prize
Scribe US, Sandorf Passage,S&S/Summit Books, Charco Press, Vintage, Graywolf Press
Six books have been named finalists for the 2026 International Booker Prize. Formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, this honor is presented annually for a work of fiction that was originally written in a language other than English, then translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland.
In a moment in which international relations are dominating news headlines around the globe, three of these shortlisted novels explore pivotal moments in world history: imperialist Japan-controlled Taiwan in the 1930s, Nazi-era Germany and the 1979 Revolution in Iran.
“With narratives that capture moments from across the past century, these books reverberate with history,” author Natasha Brown, chair of this year’s International Booker Prize jury, said in a statement. “While there’s heartbreak, brutality, and isolation among these stories, their lasting effect is energising. Rereading each book, we judges found hope, insight and burning humanity – along with unforgettable characters to whom I’m sure readers will return again and again.”
This year’s shortlist particularly celebrates female authors and translators: Five of the authors and four of the translators are women. As well as hailing from four continents, the shortlisted authors and translators come from remarkably diverse professional backgrounds: Taiwan’s Yáng Shuāng-zǐ writes manga and video game scripts, and Bulgaria’s Rene Karabash is a well-established actor as well as author.
The winning author and translator will be announced on May 19. They will split a prize of £50,000 (about $66,000).
The finalists are:
The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin
This is a multigenerational tale told by four different family members – first during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, then as the family seeks a new home in West Germany – that takes readers back to Iran, and the Iranian people’s struggle to come to a new political and social reality during the Green Revolution of 2009. In Australia’s The Saturday Paper, Rhoda Kwan wrote that The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran is “a quietly beautiful exploration of the trauma of losing one’s homeland to a savage regime, the novel is testament to how hope and the revolutionary spirit endure in the face of crushing tyranny, how courage cannot be fully stamped out.”
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
An independent-minded young woman named Bekja, living in Albania’s rural Accursed Mountains, escapes an arranged marriage, reshapes her life and decides to live as a man. That declaration sets off a chain reaction in the community, ultimately separating Bekja from the person she loves the most. The International Booker Prize judges called She Who Remains “an exquisitely written, brilliantly observed story about a young woman in a contemporary Albanian tribal society, and a blood feud that sets off her journey to self-discovery.”
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin
This novel is the fictionalized story of real-life Austrian film maker G.W. Pabst, who fled a prominent career in Nazi Germany to make a new life in Hollywood. Due to his ailing mother, however, he returns to his native country, where the regime begins pressuring him to make propaganda. In The New Yorker, critic David Denby called The Director a “complex entertainment—a sorrowful fable of artistic and moral collapse, but also a novel composed with entrancing freedom, even bravura.”
On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan
This is a horror novella set in a remote penal colony in which every full moon, the warden releases the inmates into the wilderness – only to hunt them down. In The New York Times, critic Gabino Iglesias enthused that On Earth As It Is Beneath is “a must read for those who like their poetry written in blood.”
The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump
This novel is the oldest of this year’s crop of shortlisted nominees: It was originally published in French in 1996. Its protagonist is Lucie, a not terribly gifted witch, who passes on her familial powers to her own daughters, Maud and Lise. Vulture critic Jasmine Vojdani wrote of The Witch: “This is NDiaye at her disquieting best.”
Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
This novel, which already won the 2024 National Book Award for translated literature, traces a year-long journey through Taiwan by a (fictional) young Japanese novelist, Aoyama Chizuko, a young writer of voracious appetites. Chizuko has been invited to Taiwan by the Japanese government, which currently controls the island; once there, she meets her Taiwanese interpreter, Chizuru, who enraptures Chizuko. New York Times reviewer Shahnaz Habib wrote that Taiwan Travelogue is “a delightfully slippery novel about how power shapes relationships, and what travel reveals and conceals.”
The judges for the 2026 International Booker prize are author Natasha Brown; writer, broadcaster and professor Marcus du Sautoy; translator Sophie Hughes; writer, editor and bookseller Troy Onyango; and novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy.
A satirical statue of President Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein went up in front of the U.S. Capitol in February. The temporary statue drew huge crowds that amplified the image by posting it on social media. The statue is a play on the iconic scene from the film Titanic and is called “King of the World.”
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
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Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
WASHINGTON — There’s a propaganda war playing out on the National Mall between the Trump administration and its critics. The administration has hung giant banners bearing President Trump’s face from several federal buildings. His name now adorns both the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the United States Institute of Peace.
Meanwhile, an anonymous group called the Secret Handshake has put up satirical statues of Trump and artworks that emphasize everything from the president’s friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to Trump’s taste for marble and gold leaf.
Another group, the Save America Movement, has plastered posters on fences and walls mocking members of Trump’s Cabinet. One shows a photo of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and says, “Fascism Ain’t Pretty.” Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi and reads, “Epstein Queen.”
The Save America Movement, a nonprofit, has plastered posters around Washington, D.C. This one mocks Attorney General Pam Bondi for her handling of the Epstein files.
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Save America Movement/Save America Movement
A man poses for a photograph with a gold-painted, faux-marble toilet sculpture titled “A Throne Fit For a King” that was installed March 31 near the Lincoln Memorial. The Secret Handshake, an artist collective, put up the statue, which mocks President Trump’s renovation of the White House bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom, a project that drew criticism for taking place during a government shutdown.
Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images
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Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images
“We think that ridicule is a really important tool in an opposition toolbox to fight authoritarianism,” said Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, a nonprofit.
Corcoran adds that she doesn’t see this as a fair fight “because they’re using taxpayer dollars to fund their propaganda, and we’re not.”
The White House rejects criticisms that the president is recasting the National Mall in his own image and using federal buildings for self-aggrandizement.
Workers hung this banner in February from the Department of Justice headquarters. Visitors and scholars liken it to the political iconography seen in authoritarian states such as China and the former Soviet Union.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
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Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
“President Trump is focused on saving our country — not garnering recognition,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told NPR by email. “A variety of organizations are free to share their opinions publicly, even when they lack any basis in reality.”
The National Mall is known as America’s front yard, and includes monuments and museums designed to unify the nation and celebrate democracy.
Last month, a gold-painted statue depicting Trump holding Epstein’s outstretched arms on the prow of a ship as though they were Jack and Rose on the Titanic drew a steady stream of people who laughed and posed in front of it for photos.
Not everyone was amused.
“It’s a gross interpretation of our president,” said Andi Lynn Helmy, a high school senior from Jacksonville, Fla. “Even if you don’t agree with his policies … I think it’s just an incredibly disrespectful thing.”
The battle of images playing out on the National Mall has yielded remarkable juxtapositions. They include this giant banner of President Trump, which hangs from the Department of Labor. In the foreground are banners put up by the anonymous group the Secret Handshake, which read “Make America Safe Again” and emphasize the president’s friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein banners are a rebuttal to a Trump banner that hangs from the Department of Justice and also reads “Make America Safe Again.”
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Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Other visitors took exception to the president’s face staring down from those banners on the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice. They likened it to the images of personalized rule seen in the People’s Republic of China during the Chairman Mao Tse-Tung era and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
“I just feel like he’s sort of painting himself as the king of America,” said Luke Price, a freshman at the University of Vermont. “I just don’t think that’s what we’re about. America is a democracy, not a dictatorship.”
Millions of Angelenos flock to the newest, most luxurious and financially-aggressive pseudosciences in the name of health. Wellness is so intrinsic to our identity it raises the question: Have you had a vitamin aloe serenity scrub under a glowing red light contour mask using a triple-hydration oxygenator submerged in a vitamin C longevity mist inside a gently eroding brutal-minimalist high-rise overlooking a Zankou Chicken?
Is all that real? Yes. Is there a lot of bespoke wellness fabrication going on in this city (and maybe even on this page as you keep scrolling)? Also … yes. Today — April 1st — we imagine, with our tongues blithely thrust deep into our cheeks, just how far wellness trends could go in 2026. Whether you’re a true believer or here for a couple laughs (wink, wink), we can all agree that Los Angeles isn’t afraid of grabbing onto the fringes.
Cabbage-core
With more than a dozen varieties grown in and around SoCal, in 2026 alone, heads (of cabbage) will roll if Angelenos can’t get their fix of this vitamin-rich, potassium-laden, calcium-blasted antioxidant VIP in 2026. Used for lactation suppression, nutrition, a cute hat or coleslaw. Who is 2026’s “it” girl? It’s cabbage, babe.
Girl, this is 2026, you don’t need to pay for allll that grilled shrimp! These dainty menus are taking L.A.’s hottest restaurants by storm, offering the 5 to 11 bites of the food you’ll need to look like you didn’t manipulate your pancreas to release insulin signaling your brain that you’re totally full!
FIFA for the Olds
With the World Cup upon us, soccer-loving Gen X and elder millennial Angelenos are desperate to get in on the action. Enter World Cup Camp, a place where aging super fans can step into the lives of a professional footballer without the excruciating, chronic pain (more or less). Think of it like Space Camp … but for “athletic” DINKs who played soccer in high school, just a short couple decades ago! From cleats with orthopedic insoles to scoring a single point donned in the international flag of one’s choice, this weekend is all about geeking out in ill-fitting soccer gear of yore, getting a couple good photo ops, and doing some half-assed yet earnest drills that would make fellow-41-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo proud.
Chrononutrition
An ancient nightmare, unpleasant even by L.A. standards, Chrononutrition aligns eating windows with the sun’s movement to optimize metabolism, sleep and body conditioning (so hot among L.A.’s multi-hyphenate multi-hyphenates). This exciting nutrition system may include fun things like nearly blinding your boss with direct sunlight at an open-air business lunch, or shoveling food in your face from 5:10 to 5:11 p.m. If you loved creating a whole personality around intermittent fasting, welcome: You’ve found your people.
Hot Line Dancing
The L.A. line dancing revival is back … and hotter than ever (literally). Creating stronger flexibility, groundedness and rank body odor, shimmying around in 105 degree heat is having a wild, wild wellness moment. Do you know the steps? Of course you don’t! But it doesn’t matter, just grab your best tight denim and thick leatherware and enter Club Bahia’s famed “Summer in Van Nuys Room,” for a night of pure heat, lunges and Nama-staying hydrated.
Optimized Flatulence
Your gut biome is the holy grail of wellness, so it’s only natural us humans would want to find it, conquer it and aggressively exploit it. Enter Optimized Flatulence, the new and disturbing trend of flatulating on your own schedule. No more embarrassing surprises! A simple “Substance”-eque sequence of probiotics triggers a relaxing unconscious state, regenerating a utopian gut biome in a short six to eight weeks. After awakening, the biome’s newly cultivated gut flora will respond to your neurological directive, allowing you to ultimately control when — and where — your wind breaks.
Circadian Overhead Lighting
As most Angelenos know, anti-aging efforts come in many annoying forms. But this time, the call is coming from inside the house — your house. L.A. homes are increasingly being outfitted with lighting technology that mimics the exact hue of the sun. These “Circadian Overhead lights” are designed to protect melatonin production, a new (and expensive) weapon in the war against looking old. The best part: using these lights means you’ll be in bed by 6 p.m, ready for an evening of total darkness and forced rest. Chic!
Amino Acid Trips
This is peptide packing at its hallucinogenic limit, no yurt necessary! Ingest a small but powerful tab of L.A.-grown protein-rich amino acids optimized to enhance their longevity and fat-burning properties, and let the aminos take you away. If you thought injections were effective, wait until the rush of millions of strains of ambiguous compounds hit! They say one amino acid trip is like two lifetimes of therapy, a stint in rehab and a fight with your absentee father, all in one.
As a wise and wellness-conscious Angeleno, you wouldn’t want to be the last one in your too-intense preschool moms text chain or chakra-balancing Zoom class to get in on these trends, would you? After all, spring’s here … and, well, so is my big admission: These trends are completely fake and totally illegitimate, and — like many actual fad-based treatments — meant purely for fun and not for serious consumption.
Happy April Fools!
Leib is a comedian, TV writer, podcaster and cultural journalist who has, to date, never worn cabbage as a hat.
The bass genius Thundercat has, to his regret, been spending way too much time absorbing bad news on his phone.
“We are cellphones at this point, basically,” he said. “That’s what life feels like. It’s a weird one we’re living through right now, to say the least. You have to try to stay inspired, to keep moving forward. But like, you’re processing absolute hell and war in the background, and you’re still supposed to look cute.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
That whipsaw feeling — processing grief and destruction, while doing your song-and-dance to survive, all via the same rectangle — is the backdrop of Thundercat’s new album, “Distracted,” his fifth LP and first in six years. The album is a typically dense and playful showcase for his extravagant musicality, and packed with guests like ASAP Rocky, Tame Impala and Lil Yachty.
But it’s poignantly introspective on tracks like “What Is Left to Say” and “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time.” “She Knows Too Much” has a touching cameo from his late friend and frequent collaborator Mac Miller.
“After [Miller’s] death, there were a lot of questions, a lot of stones left unturned,” Thundercat said. “But this song came to be from the simplicity of making music between friends. It’s a language, a snapshot. It was a beautiful moment between us.”
Thundercat, born Stephen Bruner, grew up in L.A. immersed in the city’s progressive jazz scene, playing with everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Suicidal Tendencies. These are some of the places around Los Angeles that still keep his inner comics-nerd satiated and musical curiosity fed — no matter what bleak news is blowing up his phone.
9 a.m. Find some coffee that slaps
If I notice that I’m doomscrolling, if stuff is getting a little bit too dark and weird and twisted, I’ll put my phone down and go drink some coffee and get way too much energy. I’ll go to the good old boys at Commissary. That’s good coffee.
My day doesn’t always consist of me picking my instrument up, but it’s more like as it feels right. If I’m not intentionally writing or working on somebody’s music, a lot of the time it’s just me. The time between is just as important as the time spent with music, so it’s learning to be OK without my bass in my hands for a second.
But there’s still so much to learn about harmony and melody from that instrument, you know? Nothing makes up for spending time with an instrument and learning it in a different manner. That’s how Larry Graham came up with slap bass. It has no bounds for what you want to create. It’s just about how far your mind can go with it.
Noon. Pick up a comic book
I find myself to be very much like a Lebowski-like character. The things that I enjoy bring me peace, like fashion and comics. The family at Golden Apple on Melrose have been my family since I was a child. The family there has always looked out for me and been avid supporters of my career. They remember my dad bringing me in — I remember the day that Image Comics premiered at Golden Apple. It’s nothing but love and artistry and great people to meet in Golden Apple — they’ve been one of the through lines in my life that has just been consistent. L.A.’s landscape keeps changing, but Golden Apple has been a beacon of nerdisms.
5 p.m. Fun at the movies
I have always been a fan of Universal CityWalk’s AMC theaters, even though they charge ridiculous prices. Everybody’s trying to keep their industry alive in this moment; it’s of one of those grit-and-bear kind of things. But at the same time, the experience that you have there is absolutely golden.
I love seeing movies there, because there’s so much to do around there. There’s a comic store, Halloween Horror Nights, Nintendo Land. There’s a Hot Topic, because I am a goth hoochie daddy. I’ve been going my whole life. I just enjoy going to the movies there by myself or with friends. Sometimes they get bored, because I will keep choosing to do this, but I don’t care, because it is a movie theater that I love. It’s always a joy to have AMC at Universal City Walk.
8 p.m. Sushi that’s a cut above
One of my favorite restaurants in L.A. is a restaurant by the name of Asanebo. It’s a sushi restaurant that is of very high prestige. The chefs there are very loving and caring. They make the most amazing food on the planet. It’s a beautiful environment — one of the best sushi restaurants, I would say, in the world. But it’s about the history for me, and the family that is built there, from the waitresses to the hosts. They treat you like royalty there.
10 p.m. Fun with friends and all that L.A. jazz
Most of the time, I don’t know what the hell is going on. A lot of the time, I would rather just sit on the couch and watch “Star Trek.” I’m not always wanting to immediately get up and just go sacrifice myself to the nightlife.
I really enjoyed growing up playing gigs all over L.A., but a lot of those places don’t even exist anymore. We could play outside the Hollywood Bowl. We’d play at a dive bar or play at a wedding, but my childhood friendships were linked to to the functionality of music in my life. If we were playing at a musty bar or some weird coffee house, it was like, “I get to play with Kamasi [Washington], and they’re going to pay us in sandwiches.”
I enjoyed The World Stage in Leimert Park. Low End Theory at the Airliner — I’d be hanging out with Flying Lotus or Tyler would drop an album and come up to perform. It was about my friends and hanging with the people that I love.
I think as time progresses, I enjoy spending time with my friends — whatever that entails. If it’s going out to a club and all that, seeing a friend perform, my friend Anderson has a beautiful club called Andy’s. There’s a restaurant called Verse, that’s owned by my friend Manny, that serves absolutely amazing food and has live music. It’s just fantastic. They just erected a Blue Note here in Los Angeles, which is awesome.
Where would you go to listen to a song by me and Channel Tres where you can dance on somebody’s butt? I’m still gonna say Andy’s, but I can finish off the night at Living Room. That’s a good place to listen and enjoy the nightlife, just a great club.
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