My International Booker predictions were a bust, again! Not that I committed them to paper (or blog,) but I was very much expecting to see My Heavenly Favourite by previous winner Lucas Rijneveld, and was hoping to see some Japanese lit after a shut out last year. No such luck. 

2024’s longlist is South America and Europe heavy, with a single Korean novel representing Asia. Africa and the Caribbean are shut out entirely. There are no French language novels,  a first since I’ve been tracking. 

I’m not sure what I expected from this jury, headed up by one of my favourite radio personalities, Eleanor Wachtel, but this wasn’t it. Apart from Jenny Erpenbeck, these are all totally new-to-me authors, so maybe I’ll find a find a new favourite, heavenly or otherwise…

Now, the reason you’re here: the updated “How to read the IBP in Canada” spreadsheet. Check it out for all the details on where to get the books in Canada (and the States – but prices are in CAD). The longlist is fairly accessible, if you’re looking to buy, and about half are available at my library (shout out to the two people who got holds in ahead of me on all seven available titles! I was slow on the draw). There’s not much in the way of audio, and the ebooks are a bit pricey, but overall, us Canadians can get a good start on things ahead of the shortlist announcement on April 9.

There’s only one tricky title: White Nights by Urszula Honek. The only option I can find, here or in the UK, is to buy directly from the publisher, with an unknown shipping time. I’m torn about this one – it’s pricey for such a slim volume, and the summary didn’t really grab me. I’m wary of poets turned novelists, Michael Ondaatje notwithstanding. On the other hand, “White Nights” is the name of a Dostoyevsky short story, and I wonder if Honek was inspired by it… and if reading this book might reignite my ambition to complete Dostoyevsky’s novels. 

I don’t have a Twitter account anymore, so I don’t know what atrocities the Booker people subjected you to in the longlist announcement (videos? gifs?) but even on the website, you’re hard pressed to find a plain text listing of the books, so here they are: 

• The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated from the Ukrainian by Boris Dralyuk
• Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated from the Spanish by Noel Hernández González & Daniel Hahn
• Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott
• Undiscovered by Gabriela Weiner, translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches
• White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated from the Polish by Kate Webster
• Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell & Youngjae Josephine Bae
• What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey
• Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
• The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
• Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated from the Italian by Leah Janeczko
• A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
• The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson

I intend to start with The Details, because it was one of my recommendations in the annual n+1 Bookmatch campaign this year – or, whatever holds come in from the library first. Those two IBP fans in Edmonton better not let their books go overdue. 

While you wait for my reviews (and let’s be real, you might be waiting a while), Bookstagramer Time4Reading has upped her game this year, posting near-daily updates, notes, and quotes, and the IBP Shadow Panel is hard at work on the blog side of things. Lonesome Reader is bowing out this year, but I found a couple other Booktube channels to check out: Gunpowder, Fiction & Plot, Ann Novella, and one of my longtime favs, who posts blessedly short videos, Rainier Books.

I’m excited to get started. A word to the 2025 jury, though: would it kill you to include a couple of Japanese novels? I hear Murakami has a new one out later this year…