Changes for Man Booker International Prize

Changes are on their way for the Man Booker International Prize.

From 2016 the prize will be awarded annually on the basis of a single book, translated into English and published in the UK, rather than every two years for a body of work.

The 2015 Man Booker International Prize highlighted the growing importance of quality fiction in translation, with eight out of ten of the finalists having been originally published in a language other than English. For the 2016 prize, both novels and collections of short stories will be eligible.

As a further acknowledgement of the importance of translation, the £50,000 prize will be divided equally between the author and the translator. 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.

The Man Booker International Prize will join forces with the current Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, with its new terms and conditions of eligibility grounded in those of the IFFP.

Boyd Tonkin, senior writer on The Independent, who has been on the judging panel for and a champion of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize since 2000, will chair the judges of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. A further four judges will be announced soon. Fiammetta Rocco will continue as Administrator of the Man Booker International Prize.

The new Man Booker International Prize will complement the Man Booker Prize 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.

Jonathan Taylor, chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, says the move will complement the Man Booker Prize for Fiction by ensuring that all novels published in English in the UK are eligible for one or other of the prizes.

'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," says Taylor. "We very much hope that this reconfiguration of the prize will encourage a greater interest and investment in translation."