news | Thursday March 10, 2016

Mend the Living is up for the Man Booker International Prize!

We are immensely pleased that Jessica Moore’s translation of Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal has made the Man Booker International Prize longlist!

Published in Canada by Talonbooks, Mend the Living was simultaneously published in the United Kingdom by MacLehose Press, and it is the English edition that is eligible for the Prize. (A different translation of Maylis de Kerangal’s novel, by Sam Taylor, was published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.) Twelve other worthy literary competitors have been nominated; see the longlist here.

The Man Booker International Prize celebrates the finest in global fiction, going to the best novel of the year written in English and published in the United Kingdom. Judges are chosen from a wide range of disciplines. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and, like all the shortlisted authors, a cheque for £2,500 and a designer-bound copy of their book. In the case of a work in translation (like Mend the Living), the £50,000 prize will be divided equally between the author of the winning book and its translator.

This is the first longlist ever to have been announced for the Man Booker International Prize, which recently joined forces with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and is now awarded annually on the basis of a single book. The judges considered 155 books. The judges will announce a shortlist of six books on April 14, and the winner of the 2016 Prize will be announced on May 16 at a formal dinner.