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What is the best International Booker Prize-winning novel?

By YPB Team

Ten winning books across ten languages, each prize shared between author and translator. Some are slim and strange, others sprawl across a century.

  1. The Vegetarian — ranked #11
    The Vegetarian
    Han Kang's unsettling 2016 winner about a Korean woman who stops eating meat, translated by Deborah Smith.
    1000pts
  2. The Discomfort of Evening — ranked #22
    The Discomfort of Evening
    Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's 2020 winner about grief on a Dutch dairy farm, translated by Michele Hutchison.
    733pts
  3. Flights — ranked #33
    Flights
    Olga Tokarczuk's 2018 winner, a fragmentary novel about travel and the human body, translated by Jennifer Croft.
    732pts
  4. Celestial Bodies — ranked #44
    Celestial Bodies
    Jokha Alharthi's 2019 winner following three Omani sisters across a changing century, translated by Marilyn Booth.
    599pts
  5. Kairos — ranked #55
    Kairos
    Jenny Erpenbeck's 2024 winner tracing a doomed love affair in late East Berlin, translated by Michael Hofmann.
    599pts
  6. A Horse Walks into a Bar — ranked #66
    A Horse Walks into a Bar
    David Grossman's 2017 winner set during one excruciating stand-up comedy night in Netanya, translated by Jessica Cohen.
    0pts
  7. Tomb of Sand — ranked #77
    Tomb of Sand
    Geetanjali Shree's 2022 winner about an 80-year-old widow's journey to Pakistan, the first Hindi novel to win, translated by Daisy Rockwell.
    0pts
  8. Time Shelter — ranked #88
    Time Shelter
    Georgi Gospodinov's 2023 winner about clinics that recreate past decades for Alzheimer's patients, translated by Angela Rodel.
    0pts
  9. At Night All Blood Is Black — ranked #99
    At Night All Blood Is Black
    David Diop's 2021 winner about a Senegalese soldier unravelling in the First World War trenches, translated by Anna Moschovakis.
    0pts
  10. Taiwan Travelogue — ranked #1010
    Taiwan Travelogue
    Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's 2026 winner about a Japanese novelist touring 1930s colonial Taiwan, the first Mandarin winner, translated by Lin King.
    0pts

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