Man Group, the investment company and hedge fund that sponsors the annual Man Booker Prize, last week announced the finalists of its other high-profile award: the Man Booker International Prize. The biannual award, founded in 2004, is given to a writer of any nationality whose work is available in English. It's worth around eighty-five thousand dollars. The finalists are:
Peter Carey (Australia)
Evan S. Connell (USA)
Mahasweta Devi (India)
E. L. Doctorow (USA)
James Kelman (UK)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Arnošt Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
Alice Munro (Canada)
V. S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)
Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)
The judges are Amit Chaudhuri, Andrey Kurkov, and Jane Smiley. The winner will be announced in May.
Previous winners of the prize are Ismail Kadare of Albania and Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Below is a video poem by Kadare and Achebe's 2007 acceptance speech.