International Booker prize shortlist led by 28-year-old’s debut

The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld joins five other ‘expansively imagined’ novels contending for £50,000 award

Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has become one of the youngest writers to be shortlisted for a Booker prize, after their debut novel made the final line-up for the International Booker.

Rijneveld, a rising star in Dutch literature, is 28 – slightly older than British author Daisy Johnson was when she was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2018, age 27. The author, who identifies as male and uses the pronouns they/them, was shortlisted after a six-hour virtual judging meeting for the £50,000 prize, which is shared equally between writer and translator, for The Discomfort of Evening, translated by Michele Hutchison. The novel, tells of a girl whose brother dies in a skating accident and draws from Rijneveld’s own experiences: when they were three, their 12-year-old brother was knocked over and killed by a bus.

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