Franco-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani chairs International Booker Prize jury

The judging panel will include one of Britain’s leading literary translators, Yulim Blacker, Booker’s Laureate-listed Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng, New Yorker writer and critic Parul Segal, and Financial Times editor-in-chief Frederic Studeman. The judges will be responsible for determining the best translated work of fiction, selected from works published in the UK or Ireland between 1 May 2022 and 30 April 2023.

While applications are already open, the list of twelve selected books will not be announced until March 2023, before the second of six books the following month. The winner will be announced at a ceremony next May.

Leila Slimani, born in Rabat in 1981, is a Franco-Moroccan journalist and author. A graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, she joined the magazine “Jeune Afrique” in 2008, dealing with issues related to North Africa.

In 2014, Gallimard published his first novel, “Dance in the Jardin de Logre”. Her second novel “Chanson Douce” won the 2016 Prix Goncourt and the 2017 Grand Prix des Lectrices Elle. In the same year, she was appointed President Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for Francophonie.

The Booker Prize was created in 1969 to reward the best works of fiction written and published in English in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2005, the International Booker Prize was established before becoming equivalent to the English prize in 2015, rewarding a book written in another language and translated into English.

The prize aims to promote the reading of quality novels from around the world and to celebrate the important work of translators. The winner will receive £50,000, split equally between the author and the translator.