The £50,000 ($77,170.00) prize will be divided equally between the author and the translator.
Two prestigious British literary prizes for foreign fiction announced their merger on Tuesday as part of an effort to get more works translated into English. The biennial Man Booker International Prize is joining forces with the annual Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Booker Prize Foundation said in a statement. From 2016, it will be awarded annually.
From next year, the £50,000 prize, open to novels and short story collections translated into English and published in the UK, will be awarded annually on the basis of a single book. The new Man Booker International Prize will complement the Man Booker Prize, the central fiction award which pre-dates the international version, in that the judges will select a longlist of 12 or 13 books next March, followed by a shortlist of six in April, with the winner announced in May 2016.
"One of the persistent observations of Man Booker International Prize judges has been that a substantial body of important literary fiction has not been translated into English," Jonathan Taylor, chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, said. "We very much hope that this reconfiguration of the prize will encourage a greater interest and investment in translation."
Boyd Tonkin, a senior writer for The Independent newspaper for which one of the merged prizes was named, will chair the judges for the 2016 prize, a spokeswoman for the Booker Foundation said. "As a further acknowledgement of the importance of translation, the £50,000 ($77,170.00) prize will be divided equally between the author and the translator," the foundation said.
Each shortlisted author and translator will receive £1,000. This brings the total prize fund to £62,000 per year, compared to the previous £37,500 for the Man Booker International Prize and £10,000 for the 'Independent' Foreign Fiction Prize.
Boyd said: "Since its revival, the 'Independent' Foreign Fiction Prize has through its record of success built a unique reputation as an annual showcase for the very best in global fiction, and for the precious art of the translator. I am delighted that, through the newly configured Man Booker International Prize, even more readers will have the chance to encounter the finest fiction from around the world."
This year's winner of the Man Booker International Prize was Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai. He was chosen for what the judges said were "magnificent works of deep imagination and complex passions, in which the human comedy verges painfully onto transcendence".
The Booker Foundation also runs the Man Booker prize for works of fiction written in English and published in Great Britain. The prize, originally limited to writers living in Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth, was opened up in 2014 to authors who have been published in Britain, a move that allowed American writers to be considered for the first time.
With inputs from AFP.
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