Using Awards Lists As a RA Tool: 2026 International Booker Prize Long List

This is part of my ongoing series on using Awards Lists as a RA tool. Click here for all posts in the series in reverse chronological order. Click here for the first post which outlines the details how to use awards lists as a RA tool.  

From the article via PW covering this announcement:

The 13 titles on the 2026 International Booker Prize longlist have been announced.

The selection was made from 128 books submitted by publishers and celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026. The titles were chosen by a judging panel including author Natasha Brown (chair); writer, broadcaster and Oxford University Professor of Mathematics and for the Public Understanding of Science Marcus du Sautoy; International Booker Prize–shortlisted translator Sophie Hughes; writer, Lolwe editor, and bookseller Troy Onyango; and novelist and columnist Nilanjana S. Roy.

Starring a "queer Argentinian conquistador," a "Japanese novelist with a ‘monstrous appetite’," and a "Danish noblewoman accused of sorcery," among other memorable characters, the longlisted books "use our collective histories to shine a light on our current preoccupations, and on the power imbalances that stem from gender, money and geopolitical forces," per the Booker Foundation. The titles hail from 11 original languages, by authors and translators representing 14 nationalities across four continents.

All but three of the books have U.S. editions out or forthcoming.

The longlisted titles are:

• The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from German by Ruth Martin (Scribe)
• We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from Spanish by Robin Myers (New Directions)
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from Dutch by David McKay (New Vessel)
• The Deserters by Mathias Énard, translated from French by Charlotte Mandell (New Directions)
• Small Comfort by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (HarperCollins, forthcoming September 1, 2026)
• She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel (Sandorf Passage)
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from German by Ross Benjamin (Summit)
• On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan (Charco, U.K. edition)
• The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre, translated from Italian by Antonella Lettieri (Foundry, U.K. edition)
• The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from French by Jordan Stump (Vintage)
• Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from Persian by Faridoun Farrokh (Syracuse UP)
• The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (New Directions)
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf)

Click here to read the full article. 

The Booker Prizes have an excellent website that makes the information about their awards not only easy to access, but also they provide a lot of background information that helps us help more readers. And from the current year's page you can easily access past years from the "International Booker Prize" drop down menu.

But back to this year, I love all of the information they provide. For example, in the article about this year's longlist it says:

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. 

This paragraph is a great way to promote this longlist in general and makes it sound like all the books are worth a read. But then there is more links as you scroll down, including:

• Everything you need to know about the International Booker Prize 2026 longlist
• and it literally has EVERYTHING.
• What our judges said about the about the International Booker Prize 2026 longlist
• This one is very useful when helping readers because it is what the people who loved these books had to say about why they loved them
• As you scroll down on the page, you can click on each title's cover to learn even more about that specific book.

And there is even more if you keep scrolling. So much great useful information. This award and the website that promotes it is really the perfect example of why award longlists can be one of your best resources. 

But in this case, we have more to be excited about. Translated fiction is getting more popular. This is mostly because there is more of it being made available to the US market. Case in point this year, as mentioned above, 10 of the 13 titles are already available in the US market. In years past we had to wait until AFTER the award was given to even get a majority of these titles into our US Library patrons' hands.

The books are more easily available, people want to read them, and now we have a reliable resource of the titles that are worth our time to consider for our collections.

Get over to the Booker International Prize website and order the 10 current longlist titles that are available right now. And go back and look at what past year's titles you could add from here as well. Your readers will be so happy. Again, from the current year's page you can easily access past years from the "International Booker Prize" drop down menu.

Remember, your job is to help your readers find those great reads they would not find without your help. And the International Booker Prize longlists from the last few year are your best resource to identify titles that will do just that.