French-Moroccan Novelist Leila Slimani To Chair International Booker Prize

Rabat – Moroccan-French novelist and journalist Leila Slimani will chair the jury of the upcoming International Booker Prize, the Booker Prizes has announced.

Uilleam Blacker, whom the Booker Prizes’ website describes as “one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukranian,” will join Slimani on the jury. The other jury members are Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist, Parul Sehgal, critic at the New Yorker, and Frederick Studemann, literary editor of the Financial Times.

The jury will select from submitted entries of translated fiction published in the UK and Ireland between May 1, 2022, and April 30th, 2023. A long list of 12 or 13 books will be unveiled in March, and the shortlist of six books will be announced in the following month with each one of the titles winning a £5,000 prize. The award ceremony will then take place in May 2023.

As the five-member jury led by Slimani brings “a wealth of talent and global experience as writers, critics, translators – and most of all as readers,” their choice of shortlisted novels should be “the top of your must-read list,” as said Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the International Booker Prize.

Passionate about writing and the literary world, Slimani welcomed her nomination, describing it as a “great honor.” She added that it is a “responsibility to present this prestigious award to a novelist and to his or her translator whose talents have enabled them to be read by English-speaking readers.”

The acclaimed writer explained, “As a child, I lived in books. Fiction is my home and I am more than happy to be able to live there for several months, surrounded by friends and colleagues, to celebrate our passion for words and stories.”

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Interested in the beauty of literature from a young age, Slimani will be reaching a new milestone in her career through the chairing of one of world literature’s most revered prizes. The prestigious award celebrated last year, Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell.

The 2022 winner made history as the first book originally written in an Indian language to win the prize. Soon after news broke of Geetanjali Shree’s novel winning the award, the book’s sales in the UK surged by 877% in volume in one week.