Inventive books top list for International Booker

LONDON — Books from Europe and Latin America that blur the boundaries of fiction, history and memoir are the final six contenders for the 50,000-pound ($80,000) International Booker Prize.

The shortlist for the literary award, announced Thursday, includes The War of the Poor, a story of religion and revolution by France’s Eric Vuillard, Jewish-Russian family history

In Memory of Memory by Russian writer Maria Stepanova and imaginative short-story collection The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Argentina’s Mariana Enriquez.

The other finalists are war story At Night All Blood is Black, by France’s David Diop, science-themed story collection

When We Cease to Understand the World by Chile’s Benjamín Labatut and futuristic workplace novel The Employees by Danish writer Olga Ravn.

The award, run alongside the Booker Prize for Englishlanguage fiction, is given annually to a work of fiction in any language that is translated into English and published in the U.K. or Ireland.

The contenders often include writers who are widely read in their own languages but less known in English. Four of this year’s six shortlisted authors have never been published in English before.

Several internationally renowned writers who were on the 13-book longlist failed to make the cut, including Chinese writer Can Xue and Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

The winner will be announced June 2, with the prize money split between the winning book’s author and its translator.