The six shortlisted books will be donated to libraries across the UK (Photo: International Booker Prize)
For years, Valentino has celebrated global arts and culture by lending support to authors and writing. This year, it will raise a glass to the literary world by sponsoring the International Booker Prize 2024 ceremony, which will be held for the first time at London’s Tate Modern on May 21.
With the Italian fashion brand’s participation, 500 sets of the prize’s six shortlisted books will be donated to libraries across the UK via The Reading Agency. They are Not a River by Selva Almada (translatorAnnie McDermott); Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Michael Hofmann); The Details by Ia Genberg (Kira Josefsson); Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong (Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae); What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma (Sarah Timmer Harvey); and Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (Johnny Lorenz).
Valentino has creatively used fashion to honour works that have made a huge impact on readers and introduce them to the best novels and short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
Writers it has collaborated with include Booker Prize nominees Hanya Yanagihara, Leila Mottley, Elif Shafak and Mieko Kawakami. It has, for example, featured text from Yanagihara’s book, A Little Life, on its jeans.
This year, the Booker Prize Foundation is also partnering English PEN to support translators from the Global Majority. The International Booker Prize x PEN Presents programme, scheduled to launch in October, will enable more literature in translation, created by more people, to reach English-language readers.
Submissions are open to those who want to create samples of previously untranslated work from any language and region. More information on this will be released soon; check [email protected].
This article first appeared on Apr 29, 2024 in The Edge Malaysia.
