International Booker Prize 2021: Argentina's Mariana Enriquez, France's Eric Vuillard among shortlisted authors

British author Lucy Hughes-Hallett, who is chairing the panel of judges, said the list showed that some of the most exciting new writing is going on “in the borderlands” between fiction and other genres, such as history and memoir. 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 International Booker Prize. The shortlist for the literary award, announced on 22 April, 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. Vuillard’s book is about a real 16th-century German theologian, Ravn’s is set on a spaceship in the 22nd century and Diop’s story of Senegalese soldiers in World War I is so “wildly imaginative … when I first read it I almost thought I was having a nightmare,” Hughes-Hallett said.