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)
David Diop, France
(photo by Hermance Triay)
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Netherlands
Jokha al-Harthi (جوخة الحارثي), Oman
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
Georgi Gospodinov (Георги Господинов, Yambol, Bulgaria, 1968) is the International Winner for 2023, the first Bulgarian writer to receive the accolade. Along with his American translator, Angela Rodel, Gospodinov won with Time Shelter (or. Времеубежище, Vremeubezhishte), his third novel. Set in a cutting-edge mental clinic where each space is decked with memorabilia from a different decade of the 20th Century to try and restart memories in patients with Alzheimer's disease, the novel describes through the words of an unnamed narrator (and also a professional collector of those items) how the experiment takes a darker turn when more and more healthy people begin to also look for shelter in the clinic to escape the confusion of contemporary life.
Below, panel chair Leïla Slimani announces the 2023 winner:
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