The International Booker Prize 2020

This disturbing debut follows a religious farming family in the Netherlands after a tragic accident. Told through the eyes of a young girl, the novel explores grief, repression, and bodily discomfort. Rijneveld’s prose is visceral and poetic, often shocking in its imagery. Silence and taboo shape every interaction. Innocence curdles into something darker. An unsettling, unforgettable portrayal of trauma.

Set in a Mexican village gripped by violence, Hurricane Season unravels the aftermath of a brutal murder. Melchor’s relentless prose mirrors the chaos and cruelty of the world she depicts. The novel exposes misogyny, poverty, and rage as cyclical forces. Long, breathless sentences trap the reader in escalating despair. There is little relief or redemption. A brutal, electrifying indictment of systemic violence.

Set during the Thirty Years’ War, Tyll reimagines the legendary trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel. Kehlmann blends historical devastation with dark humour and folklore. The novel moves episodically, shifting perspective and tone. Tyll becomes both witness and disruptor of catastrophe. Violence and absurdity coexist throughout. A dazzling, inventive historical novel.

This sweeping family saga spans generations of Georgian history. Haratischwili weaves personal lives with political upheaval. The novel explores love, betrayal, and inherited trauma. Its scope is epic, yet deeply intimate. History presses relentlessly on private lives. Ambitious and emotionally powerful.

This playful reimagining of an Argentine national epic centres a marginalised female voice. Blending queer desire, myth, and political critique, the novel overturns colonial narratives. Cabezón Cámara’s language is exuberant and irreverent. The journey becomes one of liberation and reinvention. History is rewritten with joy and defiance. A radical, celebratory novel.

Told through a chorus of voices, including spirits and animals, this novel chronicles an Iranian family across decades of upheaval. Azar blends magical realism with political horror. The narrative resists linearity, reflecting fractured memory. Violence and beauty coexist throughout. The novel mourns what is lost while insisting on survival. Lyrical, devastating, and expansive.

In a world where objects and memories disappear, Ogawa’s novel explores quiet resistance under authoritarian control. The prose is spare and dreamlike, heightening its emotional impact. Loss becomes routine, enforced by the mysterious Memory Police. The novel reflects on language, identity, and forgetting. Its calm surface conceals profound dread. A chilling, elegant dystopia.

The opening volumes of Fosse’s Septology introduce a meditative exploration of identity, faith, and art. Written in long, flowing sentences, the novel unfolds with hypnotic calm. Dual selves blur into one another. Silence and repetition carry spiritual weight. Time feels suspended. A quietly immersive reading experience.

This novel explores how memory, identity, and relationships are shaped by language. Pagano writes in fragments, circling moments of connection and loss. The narrative resists coherence, mirroring the instability of recollection. The prose is delicate and introspective. Meaning emerges through accumulation rather than plot. A quiet, demanding meditation on recognition.

Schweblin imagines a near-future world where people inhabit robotic toys controlled by strangers. The novel explores surveillance, loneliness, and digital intimacy. Short, interlinked narratives create mounting unease. Technology becomes both comfort and threat. The book questions who is watching whom. Disturbing, inventive, and sharply contemporary.

Houellebecq’s novel follows a deeply depressed man drifting through a decaying Europe. The book critiques neoliberalism, masculinity, and emotional emptiness. The narrator’s cynicism borders on despair. Dark humour punctuates bleak observations. The personal mirrors the political throughout. Provocative and bitterly comic.

Set in a brutal, isolated landscape, Red Dog explores masculinity, power, and violence. The novel draws on mythic and biblical tones. Anker’s prose is muscular and uncompromising. Bodies and land are equally scarred. The narrative offers no moral refuge. Stark, disturbing, and relentless.

This metafictional novel follows a writer paralysed by the impossibility of writing. Vila-Matas blends humour, philosophy, and literary homage. The book reflects on authorship, failure, and artistic anxiety. Plot gives way to playful digression. The tone is ironic yet sincere. A witty exploration of creative paralysis.