If Tokarczuk wins for “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead,” an unconventional detective novel that also discusses everything from animal rights to the influence of the church in Poland, it would be an unusual back-to-back victory for a major literary award. She won last year’s prize for “Flights,” a series of literary vignettes about modern-day travel.
The Man Booker International Prize is awarded each year to the best book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland. It is distinct from the more well-known Booker Prize, for fiction originally published in English, but both carry the same prize money of 50,000 pounds, or about $65,000.
The prize is split equally between the author and their translator.
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” is about an eccentric woman in her 60s in rural Poland who decides to investigate the murders of members of her local hunting club. Despite being a whodunit, the book caused some controversy among Polish conservatives for its wider discussion of issues like the Catholic Church and environmentalism.
“It will make you want to read everything Tokarczuk has written,” Nilanjana Roy wrote in the Financial Times. In The Guardian, author Sarah Perry said the book “provides an extraordinary display of the qualities that have made Tokarczuk so notable a presence in contemporary literature.”
The other shortlisted books, all of which were translated by women, are:
— Annie Ernaux’s “The Years,” an experimental autobiography from the French author, which was also a history of French consumerism. “This is an autobiography unlike any you have ever read,” Edmund White said in a review for The New York Times.
— Marion Poschmann’s “The Pine Islands.” Originally written in German, it is about a lecturer who specializes in the unusual subject of male facial hair in cinema, who flees to Japan and ends up tracing the footsteps of poet Basho.
— “The Shape of the Ruins,” by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez — the only man on the shortlist. It focuses on conspiracy theories that surround two political murders in Colombia, with Vásquez making himself the book’s central character.
— Alia Trabucco Zerán’s debut novel “The Remainder,” about three friends in Santiago who take a road trip and end up confronting generations of family pain and the legacy of Chile’s dictatorship.
— “Celestial Bodies” by Jokha Alharthi, from Oman, which tells the story of her country’s evolution from slavery to skyscrapers through the prism of one family.
The chairwoman of this year’s judging panel, historian and author Bettany Hughes, said in a statement that the shortlist contained “wisdom in all its forms.”
“Unexpected and unpredictable narratives compelled us to choose this vigorous shortlist,” she added. “Subversive and intellectually ambitious with welcome flashes of wit, each book nourishes creative conversation.”
The winner will be announced May 21 at a ceremony in London.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.