This year's International Booker Prize nominees lean heavily towards shorter works, with most titles under 200 pages. Only Mircea Cartarescu's substantial 627-page novel 'Solenoid' breaks the pattern. The nominated books include diverse themes, from a schoolteacher's existential musings to the desires of a disabled care home resident. Max Porter, the chair of the judging panel, argues that the preference for shorter books signifies quality over length and challenges the notion that longer novels are inherently more difficult to write.
Max Porter, the chair of this year’s judging panel, emphasized that the selection of many short books for the International Booker Prize is not a reflection of dwindling reader attention spans.
Porter remarked that 'some book award judges gravitate toward long novels,' believing that longer writing is inherently more challenging, whereas he argues that 'finessing a short novel was an equal challenge.'
#international-booker-prize #translated-fiction #short-novels #literary-awards #reader-attention-span
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