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Literary Awards: Booker Prizes

International Booker Prize Winner - 2024

Jenny Erpenbeck, Intl Booker Prize Winner 2024

Jenny Erpenbeck, Germany

(Photo by Heike Huslage-Koch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0)

International Booker Prize Winner - 2023

Georgi Gospodinov (Георги Господинов), Bulgaria

(photo by "Mrs Robinson" at Bulgarian Wikipedia - Image in the public domain, taken and reproduced with the author's permission)

International Booker Prize Winner - 2022

                     

Geetanjali Shree (गीतांजलि श्री), India

(photo by R. Schein - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

International Booker Prize Winner - 2021


David Diop, International Booker Prize winner 2021

David Diop, France
(photo by Hermance Triay)

International Booker Prize Winner - 2020

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (self portrait) / CC BY-SA

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Netherlands

Booker Prize Winner 2023 - PAUL LYNCH

Paul Lynch (Limerick, Ireland, 1977) won the 2023 Booker Prize with his fifth novel, Prophet song. Set in a near future Ireland, the book follows the life of a mother and scientist who fights to keep her family together as Ireland slips into totalitarianism after the rise of the right-wing National Alliance party..

Below, the official video of the announcement during the award ceremony, with Lynch's acceptance speech

International Booker Prize Winner 2024 - JENNY ERPENBECK

Jenny Erpenbeck (East Berlin, DDR [now Berlin, Germany], 1967) is the International Winner for 2024, the first German writer to receive the accolade. Along with her American-based, German-born translator, Michael Hofmann (in turn the first male translator to win this prize), Erpenbeck won with Kairos (id.), her fourth novel. Set in the DDR, the novel describes the affair between 19-year-old Katharina and 50-something writer Hans trough the last days of the country and its system, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the social and political upheaval that follows.

Below, panel chair Eleanor Wachtel announces the 2024 winners, with acceptance speeches from both Erpenbeck and Hofmann:

Booker Prizes

Since 2002, the Booker Prize Foundation is responsible for the Booker award. In 2005, the Institution also established the bi-annual International award (to become annual, with different rules, from 2016 onwards).

Booker Prize

The prize was launched in 1969 with the aim to promote the reading of quality fiction in the UK and has since become the leading British literary award. Every year it rewards the best original full-length novel written in the English language by a British, Irish or Commonwealth author and first published in the year leading up to the award.


International Booker Prize

The prize started in 2005 as a biennial event awarding living international writers for their achievement in fiction for a body of work either published originally in English or translated into the English language, in consideration of their literary contribution to fiction on the world stage. Starting in 2016, it evolved into an annual award for a single work of fiction, translated into English and published in the UK. Novels and collections of short stories alike will be eligible.

 

Booker Prize winners in the past 5 years