Astrid Roemer and Gaëlle Bélem are on the International Booker Prize 2025 longlist announced on Tuesday, February 25, 2025.
The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for the finest single work of fiction from around the world translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland in the previous year. It was founded as the Man Booker Prize in 2004 before it was renamed the International Booker Prize in 2016. Previous African winners include David Diop and Chinua Achebe with Maryse Conde, GauZ’, and Itamar Vieira making the shortlist and Fiston Mwanza Mujila, José Eduardo Agualusa, Alain Mabanckou, and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o making the longlist in previous years.
The 2025 jury is chaired by award winning novelist and screenplay writer Max Porter alongside writer, director and photographer Caleb Femi, Editor and Publishing Director of the British literary magazine Wasafiri Sana Goyal, novelist and translator Anton Hur, and BRIT Award-winning, multiple Mercury Prize-nominated singer-songwriter Beth Orton. The longlist they revealed today was selected from 154 books submitted by publishers – the highest number since the prize was launched in its current format in 2016.
Max Porter, Chair of the jury said: “Translated fiction is not an elite or rarefied cultural space requiring expert knowledge; it is the exact opposite. It is stories of every conceivable kind from everywhere, for everyone. It is a miraculous way in which we might meet one another in all our strangeness and sameness, and defy the borders erected between us. ‘As we searched for our longlist amongst the 154 books submitted, we marvelled at what the world was thinking. How are people making sense of these times using the novel as a vehicle for thought and feeling? And how are translators taking these books and – in English – making them sing or scream? The books on our unconventional longlist provide a wildly energising and surprising range of answers. We hope they will exhilarate and engage a worldwide community of readers.”
There were two titles from writers of African descent on the longlist in;
- On a Woman’s Madness Written, Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott
- There’s a Monster Behind the Door, Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood
Gaëlle Bélem shared on social media, “It is with great joy that I announce that I am in the running for the prestigious International Booker Prize, one of the most important literary prizes in the world!!! 13 works, including my little monster, were selected out of the 178 that competed. I can hardly believe it! The Booker Prize. The biggest of the British prizes. My eternal gratitude to the 5 members of the jury. My congratulations to my English team, Bridget, Laëtitia, Karen, Aoibh. Good job, girls! Finally, thank you to all of you who have been reading, supporting, encouraging me since 2020. This day is one of the most beautiful of my life! This news is a bolt from the blue in my cyclonic sky. The Booker Prize, my god!!! We did it!”
The International Booker Prize 2025 shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 8. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern on Tuesday, May 20.
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