The 13 writers on the Long List of Booker International are nominees for the first time | International Booker Prize

Mircea Cărtărescu, Hiromi Kawakami and Christian Kracht are among the writers to have made the “unconventional” international list of this year.

The 13 writers of the list are nominated for the first time, while a translator, Sophie Hughes, appears for a record for a record with her rendering of the perfection of Vincenzo Latronon.

They are now in the running for the price of £ 50,000 for the best book translated into English, which will also be divided between the winning author and the translators.

The 2025 list presents the largest number of independent publishers, with 12 of the 13 titles from independent presses.

Although the most recent Nobel Prize winner Han Kang was eligible for this year with his book that we are not separating, translated from Korean by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, she did not make the list . Kang won the International Booker in 2016 with his revolutionary novel, The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith.

Cărtărescu is the first Romanian author to be highlighted for the price, with his solenoid novel, translated by Sean Cotter. Located in the late 1970s and early 1980s Bucharest, the solenoid began with the diarine reflections of a teacher before developing in an existential surreal story of the narrator’s trip through alternative realities. Last May, he won the Dublin literary prize for € 100,000.

With the Romanian, a second language, Kannada – spoken of about 38 million people, mainly in the state of Karnataka in southwest India – also presents for the first time in the history of the price with Heart Banu Mushtaq lamp translated by Deepa Bhashi.

The Japanese writer Kawakami, best known for his novel Strange Weather in Tokyo, was chosen for his novel in history under the eye of the big bird. Located in the future in which humans are on the verge of extinction, his voice is “wonderfully captured by translator Asa Yoneda”, writes James Bradley in a Guardian review.

At 288 pages, Kawakami’s book is among the longest on the list: 11 of the 13 pounds arrive at less than 250 pages, with eight less than 200.

One of the thinner titles at 192 pages is Eurotrash in Kracht, translated from the German by Daniel Bowles. The novel follows an average age writer during a road trip through Switzerland with his final mother. “Their trip leads them through a number of black comic strip pieces in a vegetarian town, a private landing track and inside a broken ski lift,” writes Marcel Theroux in The Guardian.

The long list of this year sees an Iraqi translator nominated for the first time, with the book of the disappearance of the Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinan Antoon. When the Palestinians suddenly disappear, a friend of one of the missing begins to seek clues in what John Self described as a “rich and powerful novel”.

This year brings a record for the longest period between an original language publication and a long list of the Booker Prize. On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer was published for the first time in Dutch 43 years ago, and is now translated into English by Lucy Scott.

On the long list also appear on the calculation of volume I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland; There is a monster behind the door of Gaëlle Bélem, translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert; The Dahlia de la Cerda reservoir sluts, translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary; Small boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated by Helen Stevenson; Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton; and a leopard skin hat from Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson.

The author and president of judgment Max Porter said that he hoped that the long “unconventional” list of “exalting” readers. “These books bring us into the agony of the family, the workplace or the nation state, the almost spiritual secrecy of friendship, the inner architecture of the erotic feeling, the banality of capitalism and the agitations of faith, ”he said.

The limited list of six pounds will be announced on April 8, the winner was revealed during a ceremony in Tate Modern in London on May 20.

At the same time to carry on the jury of this year, the poet Caleb Femi, the writer Sana Goyal, the author and translator Anton Hur and the musician Beth Orton.

The judges have selected the long list of 154 pounds subject by the publishers. The 2025 prize was open to long fiction works and collections of new translated in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland between May 1, 2024 and April 30, 2025.

With Kang, the previous writers will have won the prize include Olgarczuk and Lucas Rijneveld. Last year, Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann won the Kairos Prize.

To explore all books on the long list for the International Booker Prix 2025 Visit Guardianbookshop.com. Delivery costs can be applied.