Man Booker International Prize 2013

The Man Booker International Prize began in 2005, selecting Albanian Ismail Kadare as the initial recipient. The biennial award is a little unusual in focus in that the eligibility isn't based on a single book or a writer's lifetime achievement. Rather is celebrates a writer's current body of work, not necessarily an entire career. The nominees for the prize are self generated by the judging panel, with no submission process.  The works have to be in English, but include translations.

Here is the partial press release:

"Anyone who could have guessed even five of the 10 novelists who have just been revealed as the finalists for the fifth Man Booker International Prize deserves a mass cap-doffing from the wider reading public. The previous incarnations of the prize have included a large cluster of well-known and indeed expected names, from Doris Lessing and Milan Kundera to Amos Oz and Joyce Carol Oates. There is, however, nothing familiar or expected about the list unveiled today by the chair of judges Sir Christopher Ricks at the DSC Jaipur Literary Festival.

It is a list that will, for many readers, open up a wealth of possibilities since perhaps only two of the writers can be said to have a wide international profile, Marilynne Robinson and Aharon Appelfeld. Robinson, an Orange Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner is the only one of the 10 who has been nominated for this prize before."

Josip Novakovich (Canada)

Yan Lianke (China)

Marie NDiaye (France)

U R Ananthamurthy (India)

Aharon Appelfeld (Israel)

Intizar Husain (Pakistan)

Vladimir Sorokin (Russia)

Peter Stamm (Switzerland)

Lydia Davis (USA)

Marilynne Robinson (USA)