Each year the International Booker Prize introduces readers to the best novels and short story collections from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
The 2026 Longlist has been announced!
The longlisted books travel across continents and centuries. There are bittersweet love stories and dark fairy tales; fictional accounts of historic figures and narratives steeped in magical realism. With themes ranging from witchcraft to warfare, resilience to cruelty, magic to murder, and revolution to renewal, the nominated books offer explorations of our capacity to endure, resist or reinvent ourselves, and to remain hopeful in challenging times.
The selection includes:
- 13 books translated from 11 languages, by authors and translators representing 14 nationalities
- Three debuts, along with 13 previous nominees, including five returning author-translator pairings
- Two books published in their original languages over 30 years ago; one that is banned in Iran, written by an author previously imprisoned for her writing
- Authors who include an award-winning actor, a historian of mountains and forests, an environmental and feminist activist, and writers of manga, screenplays and poetry
To read more about the longlist, visit: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/international/2026
| 2026 Longlist: International Booker Prize | ||
|---|---|---|
| The Nights are Quiet in Tehran | Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin | A topical, captivating, and moving novel about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom. |
| The Remembered Soldier | Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay | An extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination. |
| We are Green and Trembling | Gabriela Cabezon Camara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers | Tender and surreal, We Are Green and Trembling conveys glimmers of hope for the future within the brutal colonial history of Latin America, finding in the rainforest a magical space for transformation. |
| The Deserters | Mathias Enard, translated from French by Charlotte Mandell | Fleeing a nameless war, an unknown soldier emerges from deep within the Mediterranean scrubland, dirty and exhausted. A chance meeting forces him to rethink his journey, and the price he puts on a life. |
| Small Comfort | Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson | From an interview with a child star turned thief to the mysterious death of an employee at a drug manufacturer – or the couple feigning married bliss to keep their inheritance, Small Comfort carefully unravels the value we place on both money and people. |
| She Who Remains | Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidor Angel | |
| The Director | Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin | A visionary tale inspired by the life of the 20th century film director G.W. Pabst, who left Europe for Hollywood to resist the Nazis and then returned to his homeland with his wife and young son and began making films for the German Reich. |
| On Earth as it is Beneath | Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan | |
| The Duke | Matteo Melchiorre, translated from Italian by Antonella Lettieri | |
| The Witch | Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump | Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right. |
| Women without Men | Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from Perisan by Faridoun Farrokh | Drawing on recent Iranian history and transcendent elements of Islamic mysticism, Parsipur’s unforgettable novel sees women escaping strict confines of family and society. |
| The Wax Child | Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken | Based on an infamous seventeenth century Danish witch trial, The Wax Child is the extraordinary new novel from Olga Ravn, one of the most acclaimed and original writers at work today- a mesmerising, frightening vision of a time when witches and magic were as real to the human mind as soil and seawater. |
| Taiwan Travelogue | Yang Shuang-zi, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King | Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships. |
