The announcement will be made around 10:00 p.m. GMT during a ceremony in London, which will be broadcast on Radio 4, the BBC channel.
Of the six finalists vying to succeed Irishman Paul Lynch, five are authors. A record for this prize which has contributed to the success of writers like Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and even 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang, who won it in 2016 with “The Vegetarian”.
Faithful to its reputation as a talent scout, the Booker 2024 gives pride of place in its selection to names still little known to the general international public, including a first-time author under forty: Yael van der Wouden, with “The Safekeep », historical fresco on the Nazi past of the Netherlands.
She is also the first Dutch woman to reach the final. If she won this prize, she would follow in the footsteps of the Scotsman Douglas Stuart, awarded in 2020 with his first novel “Shuggie Bain”, since translated into 37 languages.
At the same time, the final also offers big names in English literature. Among them, two favorites: the Americans Percival Everett and Rachel Kushner.
A Booker after the Oscar?
After seeing the adaptation of his novel “The Erasure” make a place at the 2023 Oscars by winning the statuette for best screenplay, the African-American Percival Everett could well win the Booker with “James”. This prize escaped him for the first time in 2022.
A bit like Kamel Daoud, 2024 Goncourt Prize winner who published in 2013 with “Meursault, contre-investigation” a counterpoint to Albert Camus’ classic, “The Stranger”, James Everett revisits one of the masterpieces of American literature: “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884) by Mark Twain.
This time, the narration is from the point of view of Jim, a slave. One of the main plot threads is linguistic. In Twain, Jim’s dialect makes him a limited, somewhat pathetic character. In Everett, it is thought of as a survival tool that slaves use to hide their real abilities from white slavers.
When it was released in the United States, the book was described as “masterpiece” speak New York Times. He was also favored by the British press, the Times praising a rewrite “bright».
Another story, another era: with “Creation Lake”, Rachel Kushner, 2018 Foreign Medici Prize with “The Mars Club”, takes the reader into the world of espionage with the character of Sadie Smith, who tries to infiltrate a group of eco-activists in rural France.
Canadian Anne Michaels, dubbed by her compatriot Margaret Atwood, could also win with “Held”, her third novel. The author made a sensational entrance onto the literary scene in 1997 with “Fugitive Pieces” (“Memory on the Run” in French), a bestseller which was praised by critics.
In this new novel, the novelist explores the themes of her previous stories: history, memory, the effects of trauma and mourning over long periods, through the story of a man who tries to overcome the wound of the Great War.
Australian Charlotte Wood will also try to establish herself with “Stone Yard Devotional”. The story of an anonymous narrator, disillusioned with his work as a conservationist of endangered species, who decides to move into a convent.
In “Orbital”, the British Samantha Harvey follows six astronauts from the international space station (ISS).
The prize is a reward of 50,000 books (around 60,000 euros) and the promise of international fame synonymous with success in bookstores.
Par Le360 (with AFP)
11/12/2024 at 7:52 a.m.
