The 13 nominees for this year’s longlist on the International Booker Prize were chosen from 128 titles. All have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 1, 2025, and April 30, 2026. Here are the ones I’m reading. For the full list of longlisted nominees, go to Everything You Need to Know About the International Booker Prize 2006 Longlist on the Booker Prize website.
This novel has been available in the U.S. for almost a year, and it’s clearly a favorite among many readers and critics. The Booker’s longlisted recognition gave me the nudge to pick it up. The story derives from the life of German film director G. W. Pabst, known for his directing skills and also for making Greta Garbo a film star. He fled to Hollywood to escape Hitler’s Germany, but then he returned. Author Daniel Kehlmann imagines what happened to Pabst during World War II — from receiving a telegram in Hollywood about his mother in Germany to next directing films under the sway of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. It’s immersive reading, as Kehlmann weaves through several perspectives and builds a murmuring tension with the war in the background. Lingering from the first pages is the question about a film Pabst made in Germany that got lost. Most important of all, at the dramatic forefront, Pabst struggles to endure both Hollywood and the Third Reich overriding his talent and micromanaging his work. I enjoyed this book, and found it quite compelling. The Director by Daniel Kehlmann is translated by Ross Benjamin.
In this novel, two separate stories are told. One is of a soldier who’s deserted his regiment during an unnamed war. He can’t bear the death and cruelty anymore. He finds his way to a family cabin, where he hides for a few days, but a woman with a donkey passes by and recognizes him. He has no choice but to hold her hostage. The second story opens at a conference honoring the late East German mathematician, Paul Heudeber, who was a Buchenwald survivor, communist, and steadfast antifascist. The conference takes place outside Berlin, attended by admiring former colleagues, the woman he loved, and his daughter. It’s September 11, 2001. The fall of the Twin Towers in New York halts the conference. Heudeber’s daughter, Irina, tells the story 20 years after the conference, reflecting on what she knew and didn’t know about her parents. Letters written by her father and his colleagues reveal their lives to her, as well as files kept on them by East Germany. The two narratives play off one another exploring the human spirit in wartime dealing with issues of commitment, betrayal, and survival. Both narratives gradually became mesmerizing, as I kept reading, and left me feeling their impact long after. The Deserters by Mathias Énard is translated by Charlotte Mandell.
This longlisted nominee is from Foundry Editions, a small independent press in the U.K. The book was out of stock everywhere I looked, but I put in an online order at Foyles London bookshop for when more would be available. It’s suppose to arrive soon. (Tracking tells me it’s in Chicago.) What attracts me to this novel is that it’s described as having “the pace, panorama and plot twists of a 19th-century classic.” The eponymous duke lives in a tiny, isolated village in an ancestral villa where he spends his days self-absorbed in his interests. His neighbors don’t care much about him. Then “the village big man” starts taking timber from the duke’s land, and a feud begins. The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre is translated by Antonella Lettieri. The International Booker Prize judges say this about the novel:
The build-up of tension as the quarrel gradually escalates is electric, as each move they make turns the heat up one more notch. Anyone who’s been in a dispute will recognise the reluctance to step away from the fight. … The village itself is one of the strongest ‘characters’ and we loved the feeling of claustrophobia of the place as the narrative unfolds. Packed full of plot twists, this is storytelling at its best.
Finally, a love story, although again war figures into the context of the characters’ lives. Praise around this book was phenomenal last year, and, like The Director, I meant to read it. Given it’s a doorstopper (so is The Duke), I’m going to be hard pressed to get this read before the shortlist is announced. The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje is translated by David McKay. From the book’s description:
Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognizes Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice.
The shortlist of six books will be announced Tuesday, March 31. Here’s hoping these four make it to the finals.
The Longest Chapter 