29-year-old Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld won the 2020 International Booker prize for their debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. With this, Rijneveld has become the youngest author ever to win the prestigious prize. The award is different from the original Booker Prize and aims to encourage more publications and reading of good novels across the world.
This book is the story of a peasant family of a staunchly Christian community in the rural Netherlands. The 50,000 prize will be split between Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Michele Hutchison, as the award gives both the author and translator equal recognition.
The Discomfort of Eveningwas chosen from a shortlist of six books during a lengthy and rigorous judging process, by a panel of five judges, chaired by Ted Hodgkinson, Head of Literature and Spoken Word at Southbank Centre. The panel also included Lucie Campos, director of the Villa Gillet, France’s centre for international writing; Man Booker International Prize-winning translator and writer Jennifer Croft; Booker Prize longlisted author Valeria Luiselli and writer, poet and musician Jeet Thayil, whose novel Narcopolis was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.
Who is given the International Booker Prize?
The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation.
