Man Booker International Prize 2019 shortlist announced; Annie Ernaux, Olga Tokarczuk among authors named

The shortlist for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize that honours the finest books in translation across the world was announced on 9 April in London. Of the six works under consideration is author Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. The Polish writer has previously won the prestigious £50,000 purse, split equally between the author and translator for her work, Flights.The award, first introduced in 2005 as a compliment to the Man Booker Prize has shortlisted five women this time around in an 'unprecedented gender split' and includes French author Annie Ernaux's autobiography The Years that maps her recollections from 1941 to 2006 in an intimate memoir drawn from memory and impressions of the past and present. First published in 2008, the non-fiction work was translated by Alison L Strayer into English nearly a decade later.[caption id="attachment_6420391" align="alignnone" width="825"] Author Annie Ernaux's The Years and Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead are among the works shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize. Images via Twitter/Facebook[/caption]Also shortlisted for the prize is author Alia Trabucco Zerán's The Remainder, the story of a road trip through the ruined city of Santiago in Chile, translated by Sophie Hughes. Omani writer Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies and The Pine Islands of Marion Poschmann of Germany translated by Marilyn Booth and Jen Calleja respectively are also among the works nominated for the award.Translated by Anne McClean, Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Shape of the Ruins, has also made it to the 2019 shortlist. His novel explores two political murders in Bogota, one in 1914 and the other in 1948.The shortlist for 2019 includes books that have been translated from five different languages across three continents with the winner scheduled to be announced at the Hay Festival in Wales on 25 May.