International Booker Prize 2024

• Context (TH): Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann, won the International Booker Prize 2024.
• The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single fiction book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.
• Award: The £50,000 prize money is divided equally between the author and the translator.
• It was originally a biennial prize, began in 2005 as the Man Booker International Prize.
• After 2015, it expanded to allow living writers of any nationality to enter and was made annual.
• In 2019, the Man Booker International Prize was renamed the International Booker Prize.
• Novels and collections of short stories are both eligible.
• 1^st Indian citizen winner: Author Geetanjali Shree for her Hindi novel Tomb of Sand (2022).

How is the Booker Prize different?

• The Booker Prize was first awarded in 1969. The inaugural Booker Prize was awarded to P.H. Newby for his novel “Something to Answer For”.
• Founders: Tom Maschler and Graham C Greene.
• It is awarded for fiction written in English (not the translated one) and published in the UK and Ireland.
• Until 2014, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize. Later, it was expanded to all nationalities.
• The winner of the Booker Prize 2023 is Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
• Important winners: 1^st Indian origin winner – VS Naipaul, 1^st Indian citizen winner – Arundhati Roy.