Man Booker International 2019

Today the longlist of books up for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 was announced. This means I spent the day furiously pretending to work while actually seeing how many of these books my library system could provide can you guess the answer?

1! just 1 out of the 13 longlist books. My aim to read the whole list is going to be severely impaired by this.

So without further ado here are the longlist books:

• The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (Colombia)
• The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Wieringa (Nederlands)
• The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zeran (Chile)
• Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Oman)
• Love in the New Millennium by Annelise Wasman (China)
• The Years by Annie Ernaux (France)
• At Dusk by Hwang Sok-Yong (Korean)
• Jokes for the Gunmen by Mazen Maarouf (Palestine)
• Four Soldiers by Hubert Mingarelli (France)
• The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann (Germany)
• Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (Argentina)
• The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg (Sweden)
• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (Poland)

I am most excited about Mouthful of Birds as I loved Fever Dream and it was my choice for winner in 2017.

I am surprised to see Olga Tokarczuk on the list again as her book Flights won last year which means I am betting against her winning again. That said who knows.

The other books and authors are completely new to me so I am looking forward to some varied (if panicked) reading.

Are there any list addicts out there who would like to form a panel with us to read and rate as many of the longlist as we can? Let us know in the comments.