The 2022 International Booker Prize longlist was released March 10. Three of the thirteen books are story collections with genre elements.

The longlist was selected by a panel of five judges: translator Frank Wynne, author and academic Merve Emre, writer and lawyer Petina Gappah, writer and comedian Viv Groskop, and translator and author Jeremy Tiang.

The shortlist of six will be announced on April 7, and the winners of the prize will be named on May 26. 

• Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from Korean by Anton Hur

Korean author Bora Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society. Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from the terrifying to the wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Haim Grant.

• Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao

Inspired by Simone Weil’s concept of ‘decreation’ and drawing on Batak and Christian cultural elements, in Happy Stories, Mostly Pasaribu puts queer characters in situations and plots conventionally filled by hetero characters.

In one story, a staff member is introduced to their new workplace – a department of Heaven devoted to archiving unanswered prayers. In another, a woman’s attempt to vacation in Vietnam after her gay son commits suicide turns into a nightmarish failed escape. And in a speculative-historical third, a young man finds himself haunted by the tale of a giant living in colonial-era Sumatra.

• After The Sun by Jonas Eika, translated from Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg

After the Sun opens portals to our newest realities, haunting the margins of a globalised world that’s both saturated with yearning and brutally transactional.

Under Cancún’s hard blue sky, a beach boy provides a canvas for tourists’ desires, seeing deep into the world’s underbelly. An enigmatic encounter in Copenhagen takes an IT consultant down a rabbit hole of speculation that proves more seductive than sex.

Meanwhile, the collapse of a love triangle in London leads to a dangerous, hypnotic addiction. And in the Nevada desert, a grieving man tries to merge with an unearthly machine.

The complete longlist follows the jump.

2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST

• Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated from Korean by Anton Hur
• After The Sun by Jonas Eika, translated from Danish by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg
• A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated from Norwegian by Damion Searls
• More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman, translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
• The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman, translated from French by Leslie Camhi
• Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Samuel Bett and David Boyd
• Paradais by Fernanda Melchor, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
• Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated from Korean by Anton Hur
• Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao
• Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle
• Phenotypes by Paulo Scott, translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
• Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
• The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from Polish by Jennifer Croft