To the Point: Short Novels Dominate International Booker Prize Nominees
Only one is over 300 pages: Mircea Cartarescu's 627-page 'Solenoid,' translated by Sean Cotter. It is also one of the most high-profile novels on the list.
Many literary critics have long touted Cartarescu as a potential Nobel Prize laureate, and the Romanian author's nominated tome concerns a schoolteacher reflecting on his life, family and disturbing dreams.
The other titles, announced by the prize organizers in London on Tuesday, include Saou Ichikawa's 100-page 'Hunchback,' translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, about the sexual desires of a disabled care home resident, and Solvej Balle's 169-page 'On the Calculation of Volume I,' translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland, in which an antiquarian book dealer relives the same day over and again.
Max Porter, the chair of this year's judging panel, said in an interview that the selection of so many short books didn't reflect a 'much-prophesied loss of attention span' among readers. The 13 titles were simply the best the panel had read, he added.
Some book award judges gravitate toward long novels, he added, thinking that writing longer is harder, but finessing a short novel was an equal challenge. 'Some of these books don't have a wasted word,' Porter said.
Established in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally awarded to an author for their entire body of work. Since 2016, it has been given to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland during the previous 12 months.
Last year's prize went to Jenny Erpenbeck's 'Kairos' translated by Michael Hofmann, and previous winners have included Han Kang's 'The Vegetarian' and Olga Tokarczuk's 'Flights.'
The award comes with prize money of 50,000 pounds, or about $63,000, which the winning author and translator share equally.
This year's other nominees include Ibtisam Azem's 'The Book of Disappearance,' translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, which imagines a day in Tel Aviv when Israelis awake to find all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished; and Astrid Roemer's 'On a Woman's Madness,' about a woman who abandons an abusive marriage and has a series of affairs, including one with a woman. Originally published in the Netherlands in 1982, 'On a Woman's Madness' was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Awards. It was translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott.
The judges will now cut the list down to six nominees, scheduled to be announced on April 8. The winner will revealed during a ceremony at Tate Modern, in London, on May 20.
The full list of nominees is:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Buzz Feed
17 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Top Mispronounced Words That Will Make You Laugh
When it comes to spelling, the English language can be confusing at times. Like, why is 'gym' pronounced the same way as 'Jim'? If you've ever been let down by phonics, you're not the only one. In one Reddit thread (which you can see here), people shared the words and phrases they've mispronounced their entire lives, and honestly, I'm guilty of mispronouncing some of these exact words, too. Here are 19 words and phrases that people have butchered their whole lives: "Albeit. I used to pronounce it as 'all bite' for years. 😭" "It wasn't until I was 21 that I learned that it was 'hand me downs.' I've been saying 'hammy downs.'" "I thought the phrase 'dog-eat-dog' as in 'it's a dog-eat-dog world' was DOGGY DOG until I was a full-grown adult." –SecretMusician8485 "I used to think sci-fi was pronounced 'sky-fi' until I said it in front of my dad and he laughed at me and then told me it's actually pronounced like 'sigh-fi.'" "I was an adult when I learned it's 'chest of drawers' and not 'chester drawers.'" "Manslaughter is not pronounced 'man's laughter.'" "I'll never forget the day someone pointed out to me that I was saying 'lie-berry' instead of 'library.'' –ArizonaKim "I almost died of embarrassment my first day of grad school when I pronounced the word 'hegemony' as 'Hedgey-Money' because I had only ever read the word." "Melancholy. I pronounced it 'melon chollie' until I heard someone else pronounce it 'melankolly,' and it clicked." "I had been pronouncing 'epitome' as 'eh-pi-tome' (like how it's spelled) for decades. I genuinely thought 'uh-pi-tuh-mee' (which is the correct pronunciation) was an entirely different word this whole time." "I pronounced the 't' in pestle until like two years ago. I'm 56. I called it a mortar and pest-le." –Used-Currency-476 "Hyperbole. I was pronouncing it 'hyper-bowl' until I was 26, and I met my now-husband, who politely and sweetly corrected me on it!" "Until I was 20, I pronounced museum as 'mu-zam,' but one conversation I had with my brother exposed my error. I definitely felt that embarrassment as well, and I still have a slight anxiety when it comes to having wrong pronunciations of other words." "I was in my early 20s before I realized a footrest is called an ottoman. I always thought it was 'audiment.'" –Kribix_ "I once knew a girl who said 'oldtimers' instead of 'Alzheimer's.' I thought she did it jokingly, but she genuinely thought that's what it was called. She said it just made sense to her because it happened to old timers." "I was dating a literal physics-related PhD candidate (who was successful in getting it!) who would say 'minus well' instead of 'might as well.' Like he typed it out several times, I never told him." "I didn't realise until last year that I was saying 'pronounciation' instead of 'pronunciation.' Ironic, when you think about it." "For years, I thought dachshund (dash-hound) was a different breed than the one pronounced 'doxin.' I KNOW dachshund is 'doxin' now, but I still say dash-hound in my head when I see it." –Euphoric_Map_6653 "I went the majority of my life saying 'miss-rus' for Mrs., instead of 'missus.' No one ever corrected me." Do you have a word or phrase that belongs on this list? Let me know in the comments!
Tom's Guide
19 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
Voice cloning, celebrity impersonations and the need for safeguarding — Hume's CEO sounds off on the world of AI voice generation
On a Wednesday afternoon, I'm sitting on a video call listening to Ricky Gervais tell me a joke about voice cloning. Then, Audrey Heburn follows up to tell me her opinions on artificial intelligence. Unsurprisingly, neither of these people were actually on the call. Instead, it's Hume's CEO and chief scientist, Dr Alan Cowen, on the other side. He's showing off the latest update to his company's AI voice creation service EVI 3. Given just 30 seconds of audio, the tool can create a near-perfect replica of someone's voice. Not just their tone or accent, this new feature captures and replicates mannerisms and personality, too. Ricky Gervais telling me jokes about voice cloning features has his same dry wit and sarcastic tone. And Audrey Heburn is wistful and intrigued, while talking in a softer British accent of the time. But it's not just celebrities. This tool can take and replicate any voice in the world, all from just one small audio clip. Obviously, a tool like this has the benefit of changing the world, both for the better and the worse. Cowen sat down with Tom's Guide to explain this new tool, his background, and why his team wants to revolutionize the world of AI voice cloning. Hume operates in an area of AI that oddly doesn't come up as much. They are a voice generation software, making the claim of being 'the world's most realistic voice AI'. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. I think this is the fastest evolving part of the AI space. There are competitors from OpenAI and Google, but what we've done with Evi 3 is take the technology to the next step. It has come a long way over the years, now offering text-to-speech with a range of preset voices, as well as the ability to design a voice from a description. Now, with this latest update, the company can also clone any and all voices. 'I think this is the fastest evolving part of the AI space. There are competitors from OpenAI and Google, but what we've done with Evi 3 is take the technology to the next step,' Cowen explained on the call. 'Previous models have relied on mimicking specific people. Then you need loads of data to fine-tune for each person. This model instead replicates exactly what a person sounds like, including their emotions and personality.' This is achieved by using Hume's large backlog of voice data and reinforcement learning so that they don't have to mimic specific people. Give the model a 30-second clip, and it can recreate it from scratch. This allows the model to learn your specific inflections, accent and personality, while training it against a huge backlog of voice data to fill in the gaps. Of course, a model like this works best when given a good representation. A muffled clip of you talking in a monotone voice won't match your personality much. However, it currently only works for English and Spanish, with plans for more languages in the future. If, like me, your first thought at hearing all of this is concern, then surprisingly you have something in common with Cowen. 'I think this could be very misused. Early on at Hume, we were so concerned about these risks that we decided not to pursue voice cloning. But we've changed our mind because there are so many people with legitimate use cases for voice cloning that have approached us,' Cowen explained. 'The legitimate use cases include things like live translation, dubbing, making content more accessible, being able to replicate your own voice for scripts, or even celebrities who want to reach fans.' While these use cases do exist, there are just as many negative ones out there as well. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently warned of the risks of AI voice cloning and its ability to be used in scams and bank voice activations. This technology, paired with video and image generation could be the push deepfakes have needed for a while to become truly problematic. Cowen explained that he was aware of these concerns and claimed that Hume was approaching it as best as they could. 'We are releasing a lot of safeguards with this technology. We analyze every conversation ,and we're still improving in this regard. But we can score how likely it is that something is being misused on a variety of dimensions. Whether somebody is being scammed or impersonated without permission,' Cowen said. 'We can obviously shut off access when people aren't using it correctly. In our terms, you have to comply with a bunch of ethical guidelines that we introduced alongside the Hume Initiative. These concerns have been on our mind since we started, and as we continue to unroll these technologies, we are improving our safeguarding too.' The Hume Initiative is a project set up by the Hume company. It's ethos is that modern technology should, above all, serve our emotional well-being. That is somewhat vague, but the Initiative lists out six principles for empathetic technologies: Of course, while these are good guidelines to follow, they are subjective, and only beneficial when followed. Cowen assured me that these are beliefs that Hume stands by and that, when it comes to voice cloning, they are well aware of the risks. Early on at Hume, we were so concerned about these risks that we decided not to pursue voice cloning. But we've changed our mind because there are so many people with legitimate use cases for voice cloning that have approached us. 'We are at the forefront of this technology and we try to stay ahead of it. I think that there will be people that don't respect the guidelines of this kind of tool. I don't want people to walk away thinking there is no danger here, there is,' Cowen explained. 'People should be concerned about deepfakes on the phone, they should be wary of these types of scams, and it something that I think we need a cross-industry attempt to address.' Despite being aware of the risks, Cowen explained that he thought this was a technology that they had to build. 'The AI space moves so fast that I don't doubt that a bad actor in six months will have access to something like this technology. We need to be careful of that,' Cowen said. Cowen spent a lot of our chat focusing on guidelines and the legitimate concerns of this kind of technology. His background is in Psychology and strongly believes that this kind of technology will have more of a positive effect on people's wellbeing than negative. 'People have been really enjoying cloning their voices with our demo. We've had thousands of conversations already, which is remarkable. People are using it in a really fun way,' Cowen said, after discussing what he thinks people get wrong about this kind of technology. He strongly believes that it can be used for fun, to help build people's confidence and can even be used for training purposes or for voice acting needs in films as well as dubbing. Of course, just like with many other areas of AI, the positive benefits are competing with the negative. Being able to have a generic voice read a script is useful, but rather uneventful in risk. Being able to accurately recreate any voice in the world comes with a long list of concerns. For now, Cowen and his team are way ahead in this venture, and seem committed to the ethical side of the debate, but we remain early into the life of this kind of technology.
Cosmopolitan
20 hours ago
- Cosmopolitan
Is Adrian Dunbar actually singing in Ridley? Explaining the musical aspect of mystery thriller
After a ~three year~ wait, the second season of detective drama Ridley is the iconic TV show finally hitting our screens and we're excited to see where it takes us next. The show takes us back to the North of England as we're reunited with the reclusive detective Alex Ridley, played by Adrian Dunbar, whose hobbies include solving crime, listening to old records, in a jazz bar, which he co-owns with Annie Marling, played by Julie Graham. Yep, when the show originally aired in 2022, the musical elements had many a viewer, well, kind of gagged actually. What you might not realise is that this particular aspect of the show was thought up by none other than Adrian himself, with the actor presenting his idea to the makers of the show. "That's something I brought to it myself and I've always liked the idea of the Singing Detective, which was a programme that happened many years ago," he told Radio Times. He explained that the decision to have Ridley co-own and sing in a jazz bar was a creative choice to bring more "warmth" and "glamour" to the English setting. "I also thought that as we're going to be up in the northwest, it's going to be cold and everything," he said. "Wouldn't it be great if there was somewhere else, a location that we can go to, that would be a bit warmer, and a bit more glamorous?" According to Radio Times, Adrian explained that he really is singing in Ridley, and opened up about his musical past. "I started [out] playing in bands, so being on stage singing is something I've done quite a bit of. And even in my 40s I put another band together and I went out on the road in Ireland, played in pubs and bars and stuff like that, just for my own enjoyment, because I like it," he said. In an interview released to press, Adrian also explained that the songs were initially released by the musician Richard Hawley. "I really wanted to do something with music in it, so I suggested that he owned a jazz club. And then I did some research regarding jazz and the north of England and so forth. I came across Richard Hawley, who I didn't know, and started listening to his songs," he said. "Subsequently, we contacted Richard and we found three of his songs that we really liked, because I thought they really suited my character. And so we went and recorded them and fitted them into the show," he continued. "And I think that element really works. I also wanted a place within the show every week that you'd go to that was a bit warmer and a bit more glamorous." Kind of obsessed, we can't lie! Ridley season two returns to ITV 10 August.
