The six-title 2021 International Booker Prize shortlist includes four works of genre interest — 

• At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated from French by Anna Mocschovakis (Pushkin Press)
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell (Granta Books)
• When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West (Pushkin Press)
• The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken (Lolli Editions)

Olga Ravn’s book has already won Denmark’s 2019 Niels Klim Award for sf.

The other two non-genre titles on the Booker shortlist are:

• In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• The War of the Poor by Éric Vuillard, translated from French by Mark Polizzotti (Pan Macmillan, Picador)

The Booker Prize celebrates the finest fiction from around the world, translated into English, with the winning author and translator splitting the £50,000 prize evenly between them.

The shortlist was selected by Lucy Hughes-Hallett (chair); Aida Edemariam; Neel Mukherjee; Olivette Otele; and George Szirtes. 

The 2021 International Booker Prize winner will be announced on June 2, in an online ceremony from Coventry UK City of Culture 2021.