Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor in International Booker Prize shortlist

The Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor has been selected in the shortlist of the prestigious literature award International Booker Prize 2020 , as announced last Thursday by its organizers.

Melchor was selected thanks to her book Hurricane Season, originally wrote in Spanish and translated into English by Sophie Hughes .

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The other runner-ups are Argentinian Gabriela Cabezón Cámara for The Adventures of China Iron , Iranian Shokoofeh Azar for The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree , German Daniel Kehlmann for Tyll , Japanese Yoko Ogawa for The Memory Police , and Dutch Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for The Discomfort of Evening .

The International Booker Prize Organization, which awards the best-translated works from all around the world, stresses that this year’s titles have been “translated into five languages: Spanish, German, Dutch, Farsi, and Japanese ” and that the pre-selected authors come from six countries.

“Their books examine the human need to understand the world through narration , whether it is by sharing our own experiences , understanding our history and origins , or processing trauma and pain ,” said the jury in a statement.

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Three of the novels ( The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, The Adventures of China Iron , and Tyll ) are inspired by history and traditions from their authors’ countries of origin: the Muslim Revolution of 1979 en Iran, the gaucho culture in 1870 Argentina, and the Thirty Years War of the 17th century in Germany.

The other titles ( Hurricane Season, The Memory Police, and The Discomfort of Evening ) address how traumatic experiences , such as violent acts or the loss of a loved one, shape the vision of the world for each individual.

The runner-ups were selected from among 124 titles by a panel of five judges, led by Ted Hodgkinsons , Literature chief of the Southbank Centre in London, who stressed that they are “tremendous feats of translation.”

“Each of our pre-selected books reinvented tirelessly the received narrations , from foundational myths to family folklores , that submerge us in uncomfortable and long meetings with ourselves in a transitional state,” he said.

The International Booker Prize was founded in 2005 ; it is granted every year to a book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland , while the Booker Prize awards English-speaking authors .

Its objective is to showcase fiction made all over the world and promote the work of translators , who share the £50k prize with authors in equal parts.

The winners of the last edition were Omani writer Jokha al-Harthi for Celestial Bodies and her translator Marilyn Booth .

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