The Bukhman International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize, and the International Booker Prize prior to 2026) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Booker Prize was then known, was announced in June 2004. Sponsored by the Man Group, from 2005 until 2015 the award was given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation. It rewarded one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage", and was a recognition of the writer's body of work rather than any one title.
Since 2016, the award has been given annually to a single novel or collection of short stories, translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, with a £50,000 prize for the winning title, shared equally between author and translator. From 2027 onwards, the prize will be doubled to £100,000.
Crankstart, the charitable foundation of Sir Michael Moritz and his wife Harriet Heyman, began supporting The Booker Prizes on 1 June 2019. From this date, the prizes were known as The Booker Prize and The International Booker Prize. Of their support for The Booker Prize Foundation and the prizes, Moritz commented: "Neither of us can imagine a day where we don’t spend time reading a book. The Booker Prizes are ways of spreading the word about the insights, discoveries, pleasures and joy that spring from great fiction". Bukhman Philanthropies, the charitable foundation of Dmitry Bukhman and his wife Daria, began supporting the International Booker Prize in July 2026, and the prize was renamed to the Bukhman International Booker Prize.
History
Pre-2016 Whereas the Man Booker Prize was open only to writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland, and Zimbabwe, the International Prize was open to writers of any nationality whose work was available in English, including translations. The award was worth £60,000 and given every two years to a living author for their entire body of literature, in a similar way to the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Man Booker International Prize also allowed for a separate award for translating. If applicable, the winning author could direct the organization to present a prize sum of £15,000 to their translator.
The 2005 inaugural winner of the international prize was Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Praising its concerted judgement, the journalist Hephzibah Anderson noted that the Man Booker International Prize was "fast becoming the more significant award, appearing an ever more competent alternative to the Nobel".
YearAuthorCountryTranslatorLanguageRef.2005Ismail KadareN/AAlbanian2007Chinua AchebeN/AEnglish2009Alice MunroN/AEnglish2011Philip RothN/AEnglish2013Lydia DavisN/AEnglish2015László KrasznahorkaiGeorge Szirtes and Ottilie MulzetHungarian
2016 onwards In July 2015 it was announced that the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize would be disbanded and its prize money would be folded into the Man Booker International Prize. Starting with the 2016 award, the Man Booker International Prize became annual and changed its remit to perform the same role as the Independent prize: awarding books of fiction translated into English, in order to encourage the publishing and reading of quality works in translation and to highlight the work of translators. The £50,000 prize is split between author and translator. Each shortlisted author and translator receives £2,500. Judges select a longlist of 12 or 13 books in March ("the Booker Dozen"), followed by a shortlist of six in April, with the winner announced in May.
In July 2026, it was announced that Bukhman Philanthropies would sponsor the prize for the next 10 years. The prize was renamed the Bukhman International Booker Prize, and the winning prize was increased from £50,000 to £100,000. The shortlist prize remained the same.
YearAuthorHome countryTranslatorTranslation published in (country)WorkLanguageRef.2016Han KangDeborah SmithUnited KingdomThe VegetarianKorean2017David GrossmanJessica CohenIsrael/UK/USA Horse Walks into a Bar Hebrew2018Olga TokarczukJennifer CroftUnited StatesFlights Polish2019Jokha al-HarthiMarilyn BoothUnited StatesCelestial BodiesArabic2020Lucas RijneveldMichele HutchisonUnited KingdomThe Discomfort of EveningDutch2021David DiopAnna MoschovakisUnited StatesAt Night All Blood Is BlackFrench2022Geetanjali ShreeDaisy RockwellUnited StatesTomb of SandHindi2023Georgi GospodinovAngela RodelUnited Kingdom/ United StatesTime ShelterBulgarian2024Jenny ErpenbeckMichael HofmannGermanyKairosGerman2025Banu MushtaqDeepa BhasthiIndiaHeart Lamp: Selected StoriesKannada2026Yang Shuang-ziLin KingUnited KingdomTaiwan TravelogueMandarin Chinese
Nominations 2005–2015
2005 The inaugural Man Booker International Prize was judged by John Carey (chair), Alberto Manguel and Azar Nafisi. The nominees were announced on 2 June 2005 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare was named the inaugural International Prize winner in 2005. Head judge, Professor John Carey said Kadare is "a universal writer in the tradition of storytelling that goes back to Homer." Kadare said he was "deeply honoured" at being awarded the prize. Kadare was also able to select a translator to receive an additional prize of £15,000. The writer received his award in Edinburgh on 27 June. Winner Ismail Kadare
Nominees
Margaret Atwood (Canada) Saul Bellow (US) Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) Günter Grass (Germany) Ismail Kadare (Albania) Milan Kundera (Czech Republic)
Stanisław Lem (Poland) Doris Lessing (UK) Ian McEwan (UK) Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) Tomás Eloy Martínez (Argentina) Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan)
Cynthia Ozick (US) Philip Roth (US) Muriel Spark (UK) Antonio Tabucchi (Italy) John Updike (US) A. B. Yehoshua (Israel)
2007 The 2007 prize was judged by Elaine Showalter, Nadine Gordimer and Colm Tóibín. The nominees for the second Man Booker International Prize were announced on 12 April 2007 at Massey College in Toronto. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was awarded the International Prize for his literary career in 2007. Judge Nadine Gordimer said Achebe was "the father of modern African literature" and that he was "integral" to world literature. Achebe received his award on 28 June in Oxford. Winner Chinua Achebe
Nominees
Chinua Achebe (Nigeria) Margaret Atwood (Canada) John Banville (Ireland) Peter Carey (Australia) Don DeLillo (US)
Carlos Fuentes (Mexico) Doris Lessing (UK) Ian McEwan (UK) Harry Mulisch (Netherlands) Alice Munro (Canada)
Michael Ondaatje (Sri Lanka/Canada) Amos Oz (Israel) Philip Roth (US) Salman Rushdie (India/UK) Michel Tournier (France)
2009 The 2009 prize was judged by Jane Smiley (chair), Amit Chaudhuri and Andrey Kurkov. The nominees for the third Man Booker International Prize were announced on 18 March 2009 at The New York Public Library. Canadian short story writer Alice Munro was named the winner of the prize in 2009 for her lifetime body of work. Judge Jane Smiley said picking a winner had been "a challenge", but Munro had won the panel over. On Munro's work, Smiley said "Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise. Her thoughtfulness about every subject is so concentrated." Munro, who said she was "totally amazed and delighted" at her win, received the award at Trinity College Dublin on 25 June. Winner Alice Munro
Nominees
Peter Carey (Australia) Evan S. Connell (US) Mahasweta Devi (India) E. L. Doctorow (US) James Kelman (UK)
Arnošt Lustig (Czech Republic) Alice Munro (Canada) V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad/UK) Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Kenya)"Ngugi Wa Thiong’o" Booker Prize Foundation. Accessed 22 October 2016 Joyce Carol Oates (US)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy) Dubravka Ugrešić (Croatia) Lyudmila Ulitskaya (Russia) Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
2011 The 2011 prize was judged by Rick Gekoski (chair), Carmen Callil (withdrew in protest over choice of winner) and Justin Cartwright. The nominees for the fourth Man Booker International Prize were announced on 30 March 2011 at a ceremony in Sydney, Australia. John le Carré asked to be removed from consideration, saying he was "flattered", but that he does not compete for literary prizes. However, judge Rick Gekoski said although he was disappointed that le Carré wanted to withdraw, his name would remain on the list. American novelist Philip Roth was announced as the winner on 18 May 2011 at the Sydney Writers' Festival. Of his win, Roth said "This is a great honour and I'm delighted to receive it." The writer said he hoped the prize would bring him to the attention of readers around the world who are not currently familiar with his body of work. Roth received his award in London on 28 June; however, he was unable to attend in person due to ill health, so he sent a short video instead. After Roth was announced as the winner, Carmen Callil withdrew from the judging panel, saying "I don't rate him as a writer at all... in 20 years' time will anyone read him?" Callil later wrote an editorial in The Guardian explaining her position and why she chose to leave the panel. Winner
Philip Roth
Nominees
Juan Goytisolo (Spain) James Kelman (UK) John le Carré (UK) Amin Maalouf (Lebanon) David Malouf (Australia)
Dacia Maraini (Italy) Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada) Philip Pullman (UK) Marilynne Robinson (US) Philip Roth (US)
Su Tong (China) Wang Anyi (China) Anne Tyler (US)
2013 The 2013 prize was judged by Christopher Ricks (chair), Elif Batuman, Aminatta Forna, Yiyun Li and Tim Parks. The nominees for the fifth Man Booker International Prize were announced on 24 January 2013. Marilynne Robinson was the only writer out of the ten nominees who had been nominated for the prize before. Lydia Davis, best known as a short story writer, was announced as the winner of the 2013 prize on 22 May at a ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The official announcement of Davis' award on the Man Booker Prize website described her work as having "the brevity and precision of poetry." Judging panel chair Christopher Ricks commented that "There is vigilance to her stories, and great imaginative attention. Vigilance as how to realise things down to the very word or syllable; vigilance as to everybody's impure motives and illusions of feeling." Winner Lydia Davis
Nominees
U R Ananthamurthy (India) Aharon Appelfeld (Israel) Lydia Davis (US) Intizar Hussain (Pakistan) Marie NDiaye (France)
Josip Novakovich (Croatia/United States) Marilynne Robinson (United States) Vladimir Sorokin (Russia) Peter Stamm (Switzerland) Yan Lianke (China)
2015 The 2015 prize was judged by British author Marina Warner (chair), Nadeem Aslam, Elleke Boehmer, Edwin Frank and Wen-chin Ouyang. The nominees for the sixth Man Booker International Prize were announced on 24 March 2015. László Krasznahorkai became the first author from Hungary to receive the prize, which recognised his "achievement in fiction on the world stage". Warner compared his writing to Kafka and Beckett. Krasznahorkai's translators, George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet, shared the £15,000 translators' prize. Winner László Krasznahorkai
Nominees
César Aira (Argentina) Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya) Hoda Barakat (Lebanon) Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe) Mia Couto (Mozambique)
Amitav Ghosh (India) Fanny Howe (United States) László Krasznahorkai (Hungary) Alain Mabanckou (Republic of the Congo) Marlene van Niekerk (South Africa)
Nominations 2016–present
The chair of each year's judging panel is shown in bold text.
2016