She didn't win, but she has taken Catalan literature to new heights: the Catalan writer Eva Baltasar was left at the doors of triumph with the awarding of this year's International Booker Prize 2023, to which she was nominated for the English version of her novel Boulder (English publisher: And Other Stories), translated by Julia Sanches. The prize, which was awarded on Tuesday at a gala held in London's Sky Garden, went to Time Shelter, by the Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov, and translated by Angela Rodel. The other finalists were Whale, by Cheon Myeong-Kwan; The Gospel According to the New World, by Maryse Condé; Standing Heavy, by GauZ; and Still Born, by Guadalupe Nettel.
A first for a Catalan language novel
It is the first time that a novel written in Catalan has reached the short-list for the International Booker Prize, which rewards the best work of international fiction translated into English, and is a sister award to the Booker Prize for literature written in English. Baltasar's Boulder was published in Catalan in March 2020 by Club Editor, just a few days before the coronavirus lockdown began, and is the second part of the triptych that its author started with Permagel (2018) and has closed with Mamut, in 2022. In Boulder, Baltasar narrates the plight of a lonely woman who makes a living as a cook on an old merchant ship in the middle of the ocean until one day she falls in love with another woman, Samsa, with whom she will go to live in Iceland, to end up getting involved, not at all convinced, in the assisted pregnancy of a girl. Since its publication, more than 20,000 copies have been sold in Catalan and it has been translated into Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, Danish, Greek, Dutch, Slovenian and Galician. It won the 2020 Òmnium award for a novel and was a finalist in Les Inrockuptibles 2022. On the day of Sant Jordi this year, the writer commented to journalists that she was calmly looking forward to the award ceremony, "not waiting, but working and writing", which is what she likes.
Since its publication, more than 20,000 copies have been sold in Catalan and it has been translated into Spanish, English, French, Italian, German, Danish, Greek, Dutch, Slovenian and Galician
Eva Baltasar, who travelled to London for the award accompanied by publisher Maria Bohigas, is not the first Catalan writer to be nominated for the Booker Prize. Before her, Juan Goytisolo, Enrique Vila-Matas and Javier Cercas were also named on the short list. But she is both the first Catalan woman nominated, and the first writer nominated for a work written in Catalan, for one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes focused on works of fiction from anywhere translated into English and published in the UK and Ireland, awarding authors and translators equally: £50,000 to be distributed between the winners and £5,000 for each of the shortlisted titles. In recent years, authors such as Han Kang, David Grossman, Olga Tokarczuk, Jokha al-Harthi, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, David Diop and Geetanjali Shree have won.