Georgi Gospodinov Georgiev won the International Booker Prize, 2023 for the darkly comic novel by the name:
- (a)The Promise
- (b)Shuggie Bain
- (c)Time Shelter
- (d)Girl, Woman, Other
Correct — C, Time Shelter. Georgi Gospodinov won the International Booker Prize for 2023 with Time Shelter, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel — the first Bulgarian novel to take the award, and the prize money was split equally between author and translator, as it has been since 2016. The novel imagines a clinic that recreates past decades in detail for patients losing their memory, and then watches whole countries decide they would rather live in the past too, which is the darkly comic premise the question refers to. The three rejected titles share a revealing feature: each of them won the other Booker, the English-language prize. Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other took the 2019 Booker Prize jointly with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain won in 2020 and Damon Galgut's The Promise in 2021.
- (a)The Promise — Damon Galgut's novel, and a Booker Prize winner — but the 2021 Booker Prize for fiction written in English, not the International Booker.
- (b)Shuggie Bain — Douglas Stuart's debut, which won the Booker Prize in 2020. It was written in English and was never eligible for the International Booker.
- (d)Girl, Woman, Other — Bernardine Evaristo's novel, which shared the 2019 Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. Again the English-language prize, not the translated-fiction one.
There are two Bookers and they are easy to confuse. The Booker Prize is awarded for a novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The International Booker Prize is awarded for a single work of fiction translated into English, and its money is divided equally between the author and the translator — a deliberate statement that translation is authorship. Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell, won it in 2022, the first book originally written in any Indian language to do so.
The item is built on exactly the confusion the two prizes invite. All four titles are Booker winners; only one of them is an International Booker winner, and the giveaway is language. Time Shelter was written in Bulgarian and reached English through a translator; the other three were written in English and could never have been entered for the translated-fiction award. A candidate who does not remember the 2023 winner can still reach it by asking which of the four is not an English-language novel. Learning the recent list is worth the effort, since it recurs: Tomb of Sand in 2022, Time Shelter in 2023, Kairos in 2024, Heart Lamp in 2025 and Taiwan Travelogue in 2026.
- Georgi Gospodinov won the International Booker Prize 2023 for Time Shelter, translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel.
- The International Booker Prize is for fiction translated into English, and its prize money is split equally between author and translator.
- Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell, won it in 2022 — the first book originally in an Indian language to do so.
- Later winners are Kairos in 2024, Heart Lamp in 2025 and Taiwan Travelogue in 2026.
- Girl, Woman, Other, Shuggie Bain and The Promise won the English-language Booker Prize in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
- Treating the two Bookers as one prize; the International Booker is only for translated fiction.
- Forgetting that the International Booker money is shared with the translator.
- Assuming a recent famous Booker title must be the International winner — three of the four options here are that trap.
As a winner-to-work identification within a year of the announcement, or as a statements item on the prize's rules and Indian winners.
For which one of the following books did Kiran Desai win the Man Booker Prize 2006?
- (a) The Secret River
- (b) In the Country of Men
- (c) The Inheritance of Loss
- (d) Mother's Milk
Answer(c) The Inheritance of Loss
The same winner-to-title question from the English-language Booker. Kiran Desai's 2006 win belongs to the prize the three distractors here come from, which is precisely the pair of awards a candidate has to keep apart.
Consider the following statements: 1. The Man Booker Prize is awarded to citizens of any of the countries of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. 2. A leading London-based software company underwrites the Man Booker Prize presently. 3. The winner of the Man Booker Prize in the year 2004 is a South Asian. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 3
- (c) 2 and 3
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(a) 1 only
The rules of the same family of prizes, tested directly. UPSC asked about eligibility and sponsorship of the English-language Booker; the International Booker's own rule — translated fiction, with the money shared between author and translator — is the counterpart worth learning beside it.
CDS_GK_2023_I_Q632023Which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree, is the first book originally written in any Indian language to win the International Booker Prize. 2. Tomb of Sand is the first novel translated from Hindi to be given the International Booker Prize. Select the correct answer using the code given below.
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 2 only
- (c) Both 1 and 2
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2
Answer(c) Both 1 and 2
The previous year's winner of the very same prize, asked in the previous CDS paper. Tomb of Sand in 2022 and Time Shelter in 2023 are consecutive International Booker winners, and taking the two together fixes what the award is for.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The International Booker Prize money is
- (a)Given entirely to the author
- (b)Given entirely to the translator
- (c)Divided equally between the author and the translator
- (d)Divided between the author and the publisher
Answer(c) Divided equally between the author and the translator, a rule in force since 2016.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Tomb of Sand, which won the International Booker Prize in 2022, was originally written in
- (a)Bengali
- (b)Hindi
- (c)Malayalam
- (d)Marathi
Answer(b) Hindi — Geetanjali Shree's novel, translated by Daisy Rockwell, was the first book originally in an Indian language to win.