The International Booker Prize 2022

Tomb of Sand follows an eighty-year-old woman who, after the death of her husband, begins a late-life rebellion against expectation and memory. The novel is playful, digressive, and linguistically exuberant, challenging conventions of age, gender, and narrative itself. Shree moves fluidly between India and Pakistan, personal grief and political history. The book celebrates curiosity and movement over closure. Its humour coexists with profound reflection on borders and loss. A joyful, radical reinvention of what a novel can be.

The concluding volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology deepen its meditative exploration of art, faith, and identity. Written in Fosse’s signature flowing sentences, the novel blurs boundaries between selves and realities. Silence and repetition carry profound emotional weight. The book reflects on loneliness, devotion, and the mystery of existence. Its pace is slow but immersive. A quietly monumental achievement.

This compact novel follows a woman with Parkinson’s disease determined to uncover the truth behind her daughter’s death. Piñeiro blends crime elements with philosophical inquiry into autonomy, motherhood, and faith. The narrative unfolds over a single arduous journey, heightening its intensity. Physical limitation becomes a lens for moral urgency. The prose is precise and unsentimental. A powerful meditation on agency and grief.

Tokarczuk’s vast historical novel chronicles the life of Jacob Frank, a controversial religious leader in eighteenth-century Europe. Blending myth, archive, and multiple narrators, the book interrogates belief, power, and heresy. Tokarczuk destabilises linear history, foregrounding marginal voices. The scope is epic, yet the insights are intimate. It demands commitment but richly rewards it. A dazzling feat of historical imagination.

Heaven is a quiet, devastating novel about two bullied teenagers who form a fragile bond. Kawakami writes with restraint and empathy, capturing the interior lives of young people shaped by cruelty and isolation. The book interrogates suffering, endurance, and the ethics of pain. Its simplicity intensifies its emotional impact. The novel refuses easy redemption. Tender, bleak, and deeply affecting.

Cursed Bunny is a collection of unsettling stories blending horror, satire, and social critique. Chung uses the grotesque to expose misogyny, capitalism, and bodily fear. The stories are sharp, strange, and often darkly funny. Ordinary objects become sites of terror. The collection refuses comfort. Inventive and disturbingly memorable.

Grossman’s novel intertwines the lives of three generations of women marked by war and captivity. The book examines trauma, storytelling, and survival with emotional intensity. Grossman’s prose is lyrical and probing. Silence becomes as important as speech. The novel questions how pain is inherited. A deeply moving exploration of endurance.

This story collection explores queer life, faith, and belonging in Indonesia and beyond. Pasaribu blends humour with pain, often subverting expectations of happiness. The stories are intimate and politically resonant. Religious and cultural tensions shape each narrative. The voice is distinctive and compassionate. A quietly radical collection.

Paradais is a furious, claustrophobic novel set in a gated Mexican community. Following two young men spiralling toward violence, the book exposes misogyny, entitlement, and rage. Melchor’s prose is relentless, trapping the reader inside obsessive thought. Social inequality simmers beneath every scene. The novel builds toward inevitable catastrophe. Brutal, disturbing, and uncompromising.

This novel captures queer life in contemporary Seoul through a series of interconnected episodes. Park writes with humour and vulnerability about love, friendship, and survival. The city is vibrant but unforgiving. The book balances joy with loneliness and loss. Its conversational tone belies emotional depth. A vivid, compassionate portrait of chosen family.

Huisman’s novel reconstructs the life of her mother, a brilliant and volatile woman. Blending memoir and fiction, the book explores love, illness, and inheritance. The prose is intimate and unsparing. Contradictions are embraced rather than resolved. The portrait resists idealisation. A moving exploration of maternal complexity.

Phenotypes examines race, privilege, and activism in contemporary Brazil through a fractured narrative. Scott blends personal conflict with political debate. The novel confronts colourism and liberal complacency head-on. Its structure mirrors social fragmentation. Dialogue crackles with tension. Urgent and confrontational.

This experimental collection explores capitalism, desire, and futurity through surreal, hybrid narratives. Eika’s writing is provocative and uncompromising. Bodies, labour, and resistance are rendered strange and vivid. The stories reject realism in favour of intensity. The book challenges how we imagine politics and intimacy. Daring and unsettling.