By the time I get this posted, this may as well be titled “How to read the 2026 International Booker *short*list. It really snuck up on me this year! I’ll blame my inattention on the fact that I’m in the middle of a long, meandering John Irving novel (that doesn’t narrow it down, does it… it’s Last Night in Twisted River) and that I’m on a book buying ban. I just booked a vacation to Nova Scotia for the family, and I bet I could have travelled to any of the countries represented in this longlist for the cost of travelling across my own. So, no new books for me!

While not as out-of-left-field as last year’s list, 2026 has a few surprises. There’s a book that came out in its original language in 1989, making it the same age as the youngest author on the list. There are no huge names (Daniel Kehlmann and Mathias Énard being perhaps the biggest), but I’m not sure if anyone got snubbed – other than Solvej Balle for volume II of her series that was on the list last year.

Find everything you need to know about obtaining these books in Canada in the updated “How to read the IBP in Canada” spreadsheet, or if you’re in a hurry, you can refer to the plain-text longlist below.

The longlist is fairly accessible in Canada. Today, all the books are available from Blackwell’s for the bargain price of $391.54 CAD. (About $60 more than last year’s longlist. Inflation: not just at the grocery store.) If you prefer to spend your money locally, most of them are available now at Canadian retailers too, with the exception of The Witch (out in April), The Duke (doesn’t seem to have a North American publisher) and Small Comfort (not out here till September).

My track record for timely IBP reviews isn’t great, but if you’re patient, I’ll get to a few of these eventually. I just got Taiwan Travelogue from the library, thankfully it’s on the shortlist as well.

Here are a few IBP lovers to read and watch in the meantime:

• 1st Reading’s Blog
• findingtimetowrite
• Yarra Book Club
• TheDiscoKing (YouTube)
• Gunpowder, Fiction & Plot (YouTube)

And here’s the longlist:

• The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar, translated from the German by Ruth Martin
• We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
• The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje, translated from the Dutch by David McKay
• The Deserters by Mathias Énard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
• Small Comfort by Ia Genberg, translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson
• She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, translated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
• The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin
• On Earth As It Is Beneath by Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan
• The Duke by Matteo Melchiorre, translated from the Italian by Antonella Lettieri
• The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump
• Women Without Men by Shahrnush Parsipur, translated from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh
• The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King