International Booker Prize 2026 Winner Prediction and Shortlist Discussion

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00][music] >> Hello, hello. The winner of the 2026 International Booker Prize is going to be announced on May 19th. So, I'm here to give my ranking of this year's short list and what I hope will win the prize as well as a discussion about each of these books. Although, I'll keep it quite brief because I've made uh separate videos about uh most uh of these books. So, I'll link uh those below uh if you want to know more of my thoughts about all of these titles. been steadily reading my way through this year's list and I would love to hear what you hope is going to win this year's prize and what you think is going to win and maybe those things are different. And what do you think about this year's prize list in general? I mean, I I think it's been uh fairly good year overall. I mean, not all of the books have landed with me, but uh uh there other books from the long list that I think really stand out.

[00:01:03]So, these ones uh in particular I appreciated reading so much and uh I thought were really uh both enjoyable and uh really fascinating reads and ones that I probably wouldn't have got to if it weren't, you know, for this prize.

[00:01:19]And The Remaindered Soldier in particular stands out to me. I mean, I read this with uh my online book club and we had so many great discussions about this cuz you can look at the story in a number of different ways and it's so intriguing what is really going on uh in this story and uh so it was so worth talking about uh at length. Uh but, yeah, I'd really love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Now, first off, uh probably my least favorite book from this year's short list, which I just um read uh recently and uh talked about uh is The Witch uh because this novel I I just I I it had so much promise such a really interesting concept to it of uh showing a modern-day witch in a kind of domestic situation but whose powers are limited and who feels a sense of frustration that she should feel fulfilled with her life uh but finds uh that uh what is manifested has fallen short and uh she is not able to live up to the abilities that she thinks she should but there are so many nasty characters and nasty comments in this this novel and it's not just that I feel like, "Oh, people are being mean."

[00:02:51]And because I don't have an issue with that but the way that it is portrayed uh in this novel where there are so many casual comments that are just kind of thrown out there and I almost felt this sense of complicity that I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be questioning these comments that are being made uh about people's weight and size or if I should be laughing along with them and I found that really troubling. I felt similarly to this about the novel Whale, which the South Korean novel Whale, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize a few years ago and that there were lots of, you know, throwaway uh kind of insulting comments uh in that novel as well but it wasn't interrogated in any way. It was just kind of put out there as if this is just an objective observation and it made me really uncomfortable reading this and I think partly both with this novel and well, you know, they were books that were uh published in their original languages many, many years ago, but have only just recently come out in English and it feels like they weren't kind of updated for our current times and with our current sensibility. The plot it kind of just kind of jostles us uh along. Uh there's lots of random and chaotic events that happen and I don't know if it really builds up to a stronger message and maybe going back and rereading this book, it would yield uh more insights, but personally, I don't think so and I don't want to spend the time doing that with this story. Uh so, yeah, this this was uh quite a big uh fail for me. Like the more I think about it, the more I get annoyed about this novel. Fifth in the ranking for me would be The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran, which I I did enjoy reading this novel and and appreciated a lot of aspects of it as it you know follows a family leaving Iran and what happens to our political convictions uh when we are disappointed by how those manifest in uh in in a national way and what happens to our sense of family when we are displaced and we have to readjust to our sense of who we are and this tension of whether we'll be able to return to a place of origin or make a new life somewhere else and how this follows this in a family over generations and over time. I thought it was quite clever that the interplay between the different sections where you kind of catch up with certain characters and what is going on in their life and then as it moves between the different characters in this family and we discover more things about these characters that we'd seen only briefly in previous sections and the the section where the the women of the family go back to Iran and following them through that process. I thought was really strong, but there was something about this story and it's it's movement that it didn't I think entirely do as much as it could and there were certain statements and lines in the story that felt like they were striving for kind of philosophical point of view, but just came across as more banal to me. So I felt like the writing in this could have been a lot tighter, but of course it's impossible reading this now without reflecting upon the current war going on in Iran and thinking about its impact upon individuals who had previously left the country and those that are still living there. So I really appreciated reading this. Fourth in my ranking and this might be a bit controversial, but I would say on Earth as it is beneath and this story has a real intensity to it and it and it unfolds like a thriller, but it also says something much larger about our society and people in our society that we just kind of want to push aside and pretend don't exist anymore whether they are guilty or not and what do individuals do in a situation like that and and following the claustrophobic atmosphere of this penal colony where conditions have devolved to such a point that the person running this facility has gone insane and is hunting people for sport and following the the prisoners as they try to figure out what to do.

[00:08:11]It is really thrilling and it's so tight this story. I mean, it's very brief, but I I felt like it did almost like pass too quickly for me and there were some elements of the plot that I felt kind of stretched credulity a bit that were just kind of more convenient there for the story rather than being logical and to create a sense of tension rather than it actually working actually being believable. So, yeah, that that's kind of my my criticism of the story, but I was so glad to read this. I thought it's really powerful. I mean, incredibly bracing and violent writing, but it kind of matches the subject matter of the story and feels quite fitting for it and I do want to read more by this author. Third in my ranking and again, this may be a bit controversial as it's been a book that a lot of readers have been criticizing a lot, but Taiwan Travelogue, which is a book that I just enjoyed so much like on the surface level of the story and the characters and the descriptions, but also I think there is something so cleverly subversive about this story and the way it is structured and and following a character who goes through a real process of self-interrogation who has good intentions but has elements to her attitudes and beliefs that really need to be scrutinized more and how that is done over the course of the story I'm following the relationship between these two characters as they are traveling around Taiwan and trying so many different dishes and experiencing elements of the culture and the way that culture has been transformed and the tensions within this society because of imperialism and how that unfolds over the course of the the novel I think is so clever and yeah I I found this story to be so evocative and the that it made me really think about certain elements the of terms and words and how those are used and the way that they are translated and what is lost in translation and the different interpretations of certain words and terms and things about our culture that are shared reference points and how those are modified to be more palatable and what that means to who we are essentially and our sense of identity and so I think this novel says so much about translation in itself which after all this is a prize which is celebrating translation I think it is so cleverly done. And for the final two books on the short list I really struggle to decide which of these books I think should win. I think they are individually excellent and such great surprising reading experiences for me and they are stories that have really stuck with me. But if I was forced to choose between them, if I was a judge myself, I would probably say that She Who Remains would come in number two.

[00:11:51]Although this book has been the great discovery of from this year's list for me. I had not heard of this novel before it was listed for this prize and it was a book that completely enraptured me and the question it asks of how do we survive when we grow up in such isolated circumstances in community that has such restrictions upon people's behavior and how we need to modify elements of who we are to literally survive within this community and what that does to one's sense of identity.

[00:12:39]But then the question of can we then leave such circumstances and enter into a larger society and ask for what we truly want in life. The fear and difficulty of that and a sense of the unknown.

[00:13:04]And how this novel is structured to present this situation and ask these questions in this isolated Albanian community and a character that is so striking and complex and not literate that there's a whole element of this story that this this character is literally not able to communicate with others you know through the written word and so what does that do to someone's personality and how they interact with the world and I I thought this was so clever and but also poetic and poignant and says something so much larger about our world and the ways that we interact with each other in society by using a very specific example and story and character and I I I thought this was absolutely great and I would be so happy to to see this win as well. And finally the book that I hope will win and that I think probably will win is The Director and this novel I I think beyond its individual story I think it says so much about our relationship to fact and fiction and even though this is a historically set story and set during World War our relationship to the truth and how because of political circumstances we might modify what we purport to be true in order to survive and then what does this do to art and the expression of art throughout that this by by following a filmmaker who is forced to make make these films under such circumstances and under a regime and finds himself and his family trapped in such circumstances and there are so many scenes in this of how the relationship of the parents with their son transforms under such conditions I found so heart-wrenching and terrifying.

[00:15:34]And there are scenes in this book where it feels like well it's just making a film it's just all fiction but then the reality of the people involved in such a production because of the circumstances of the time I I I found that so startling. I was completely gripped by this story and the clever way that it is structured throughout the different sections and following different characters over a period of of time as the the events are related. I I I thought it was so well calibrated how Daniel Kehlmann does that but also the the book group scene in this novel just stands out to me so much and you know as someone who loves literature and loves talking about books and because it brings out so many elements that we can more honestly discuss I think you know through the medium of fiction than just in normal everyday society that literature serves as a catalyst for this and to see a book group where the opinions one must modify one's opinions about something because of the values that the book embodies and whether one can be critical of those or not I think says so much more about than just this this individual story and how that is so relevant for our times as well and so yeah this book just completely stands out to me and uh I think it's it's a winner and I thought this ever since you know before the the longlist was even announced. So, yeah, it's a book that I definitely want to return to at some point and will be glad to reread again, as well as I will lots of other books from this year's list. I mean, not The Witch, but the other books that are on the list.

[00:17:35]Yeah, I would I would love to go back and reread at some point. And after all, the judges make their choices partly on going back and rereading the books and seeing whether they stand out. It's kind of way I think of trying to get at, you know, whether these books will stand the test of time or not. Um so, those are my rankings and my thoughts on the books, but I would love to hear in the comments below. Do you agree with me? Do you agree disagree with me? And do you do you have different ideas and have different experiences of these books? I would love to hear about that. But it'll be really exciting to see what wins on May 19th. So, thank you for following along and watching this and I hope you're doing well and reading good things. I'll speak to you again soon.

[00:18:24]Bye-bye.