Journeys within, gaze fearless

In a world obsessed with borders and narrow nationalism, Daniel Kehlmann takes a moment from history and makes it urgently contemporary in his latest work. The 14th novel of the Munich-born writer of German and Austrian nationality, The Director, translated by Ross Benjamin, has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.

Kelhmann looks at the “strange moral glamour” of films, and the way it can “make compromise look like professionalism.” He uses the real-life story of G W Pabst, a celebrated filmmaker who became morally compromised during the Nazi era, and how seemingly easy it can be to become complicit and look away. Pabst, unable to resist the offers made by the minister of propaganda in Berlin, that includes a place at a sanatorium for his mother, begins making films, hoping he will not submit to any “dictatorship but art”. Yet, under the shadow of his expedient acceptance, a Faustian bargain had already been made.

Five other books on the shortlist — all by women — take readers on a journey from Brazil to Taiwan, Albania to France, and Iran after the Revolution. It is a fascinatingly informative journey that ultimately throws light on the human condition, tying in with the theme of the Prize’s 10th year, ‘Fiction Beyond Borders’.

The shortest book on the list is Ana Paula Maia’s On Earth As It Is Beneath, translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan. The novella is set in a penal colony which came up on land where slaves had been tortured. The present inmates don’t know “whether to tell the truth or just plead ignorance” on any questions they are asked for fear of the repercussions. The prison is winding down, but no one knows what awaits. One of the characters is Bronco Gil, a prisoner convicted of murder, who also appears in her previous novel, Of Cattle and Men, set in a slaughterhouse. Like Kafka’s chilling short story, In the Penal Colony, Maia maps the cruelty people in power often unleash on those who do not have any say.

Brutality and isolation appear in other titles as well. Irena Ivanova wears many hats – writer, scriptwriter, theatre director, actress. The Bulgarian, who is also a poet, uses the pen name Rene Karabash. Her deeply moving debut novel, She Who Remains, translated by Izidora Angel, is about a teenage girl, Bekija, growing up in a remote Albanian village in 2017 but still ruled by ancient Kanun (laws). She denounces an arranged marriage by opting to become a “sworn virgin” and live as a man, Matija. Other writers — Ismael Kadare (Broken April), Elvira Dones (Sworn Virgin) — have explored this gender transformation guided by honour, and Karabash has said that she read Kadare’s books to learn about “their particular world.” It resulted in a novel radical in form and spirit. There is no formal sentence structure, with the free-flowing prose delving into questions of gender, queer love, family, religion and how the past informs the present.

A bittersweet queer love story is also at the heart of Yáng Shuāng-zi’s novel, Taiwan Travelogue, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King. It’s May 1938, and a young Japanese novelist, Aoyama Chizuko, embarks on a trip to Taiwan. She has been enlisted by the Japanese government ruling the island to write about her experience, but Chizuko wants to look beyond any imperialist agenda. When Chizuko meets her interpreter, Chizuru, they make an instant connection over food — the writer admits she has a “monstrous appetite.” Together, they travel all over Taiwan, and their mouth-watering culinary adventures are a moveable feast, becoming a foil for a dark tale of colonial history and how power imbalances any relationship.

With US President Donald Trump’s unbelievable threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages”, it’s the right time to read Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran, translated from German by Ruth Martin. It tells a multigenerational story of a family who flee from Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and subsequently return, and the country’s rich, multi-layered, complex history. The other great novel on Iran on the longlist, Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men, translated from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh, unfortunately didn’t make it to the shortlist. The book, banned in Iran since its publication in the 1980s, imagines a garden outside Tehran where women can live, breathe and imagine.

That women, who dare to think differently, always come under extreme pressure is the focus of two books — The Witch, written by Marie Ndiaye, and translated from French by Jordan Stump, about a mother with waning magical powers who transfers them to her 12-year-old twin daughters, and The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken about a real-life 17th century Danish witch trial. Ravn missed out, unlike Ndiaye, but both books write about women, one in the past, one in the present, who didn’t conform and had to face the consequences.

Since the shortlist has been announced, readers have debated the omissions, particularly Matteo Melchiorre’s The Duke, translated by Antonella Lettieri, about a maverick Italian aristocrat who has seen better days, as much as they have lauded the inclusions. In a particularly strong year for translated fiction, the jury’s task was cut out, but as the Chair, Natasha Brown, said about the selection: “With narratives that capture moments from across the past century, these books reverberate with history. While there’s heartbreak, brutality and isolation among these stories, their lasting effect is energising.” Now, on to May 19, when the winner will be declared; last year, Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi won for their collection of stories, Heart Lamp.

The writer is a journalist based in Kolkata.