Media. News and press releases from across Man Group.

07 July 2016

Chaired by Nick Barley, Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the panel consists of: translator Daniel Hahn; award-winning poet Helen Mort; Turkish author and academic Elif Shafak and Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe.

2017 is the second year of the newly evolved Man Booker International Prize, which was originally launched in 2005. The 2017 judging panel will be looking for the best translated fiction book of the year, selected from entries published in the UK between 1 May 2016 and 30 April 2017.

The 2016 prize was won by Korean author Han Kang and her translator Deborah Smith for The Vegetarian. The £50,000 prize was split equally between author and translator for the first time.

UK sales of The Vegetarian rose six-fold in the week after the prize was announced, rising to 900% of the pre-win weekly sale after three weeks. The effect of the prize on sales in Korea was stratospheric: the Korean edition of The Vegetarian had sold 20,000 copies in the decade following publication. Two weeks after the win the Korean publisher had had orders for almost half a million copies.

“One of the best things about the new Man Booker International prize was hearing it described as ‘a win for literary translation as a whole’, which seemed absolutely correct and wholly appropriate.” Deborah Smith, The Irish Times

“Novelists, poets, translators, linguists - and above all readers - the judges of the 2017 Man Booker International Prize have a particular enthusiasm, experience and discernment that will serve them well in the year ahead. They have an outstanding chair in Nick Barley, who has built the Edinburgh International Book Festival into one of the most wide-ranging and inventive literary festivals in the world.” comments Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize.

The ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 12 or 13 books will be announced in March 2017 and the shortlist of six books in April 2017. The winner will be announced in May 2017.

The prize is sponsored by Man Group, one of the world’s largest independent alternative investment managers, which also sponsors the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Both prizes strive to recognise and reward the finest in contemporary literature.