Pamuk, Ferrante shortlisted for Booker International Prize

Elusive Italian author Elena Ferrante and Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk are among six finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction.

Ferrante’s Neapolitan tale The Story of the Lost Child and Pamuk’s Istanbul-set A Strangeness in My Mind are on a shortlist, announced on Thursday, that includes books from Asia, Africa and Europe.

Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey’s best-known authors and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. Ferrante has topped best-seller lists around the world with her four novels of friendship and life in Naples, but her identity remains a mystery.

She writes under a pseudonym and rarely gives interviews.

Also among the finalists is Yan Lianke’s The Four Books, one of the few Chinese novels to tackle the Great Famine of the 1950s and ’60s, in which millions died. The author’s satirical novels have frequently been banned in China.

The other shortlisted books are Angolan revolution saga A General Theory of Oblivion by Jose Eduardo Agualusa; food-themed novel The Vegetarian by South Korea’s Han Kang; and Alpine tale A Whole Life by Austria’s Robert Seethaler.

However, Japanese Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe’s Death by Water did not make the shortlist.

“This exhilarating shortlist will take readers both around the globe and to every frontier of fiction. In first-class translations that showcase that unique and precious art, these six books tell unforgettable stories from China and Angola, Austria and Turkey, Italy and South Korea,” said Boyd Tonkin, chair of the Man Booker International Prize judging panel.

“Our selection shows that the finest books in translation extend the boundaries not just of our world, but of the art of fiction itself. We hope that readers everywhere will share our pleasure and excitement in this shortlist.”

No Indian author was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for fiction this year.

Last year, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai beat Amitav Ghosh for the biannual £60,000 Man Booker International Prize.

Krasznahorkai, who writes in Hungarian, was announced as the winner at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The previously biannual prize has been combined with the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and from this year will be awarded annually to a single book.

The £50,000 ($71,000) prize is divided evenly between the author and the book’s translator. The prize was previously a career honour, but changed this year to recognise a single work of fiction. The winner will be announced in London on May 16. The prize will be divided equally between the author of the winning book and its translator. The “Booker Dozen” was culled by a panel of five judges, chaired by Independent writer Boyd Tonkin, from a total of 155 books.