Daniel Bowles longlisted for International Booker Prize
The English-language version of Christian Kracht鈥檚 novel Eurotrash鈥攖ranslated from its original German by Associate Professor of German Studies Daniel Bowles鈥攈as been longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize. The annual prize, split equally between author and translator, recognizes fiction from around the world that has been translated into English and published in the United Kingdom and/or Ireland.
is one of 13 titles鈥攔epresenting novels and short story collections鈥攐n the longlist. The longlisted books have been translated from 10 languages: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Romanian and Spanish. The judges chose their longlist from 154 books submitted by publishers.
This is the first time Bowles, a scholar and translator of German-language fiction and nonfiction, has been named to the International Booker Prize longlist. He previously was awarded the Goethe-Institut鈥檚 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator鈥檚 Prize for his 2015 translation of another Kracht novel, Imperium. He also is the author of the book, The Ends of Satire: Legacies of Satire in Postwar German Writing.
Kracht is a Swiss writer who has been compared to Nick Hornby and Bret Easton Ellis. The protagonist of Eurotrash is a jaded writer named Christian who embarks on a tragicomic road trip with his elderly mother and her ill-gotten wealth. The acclaimed novel received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was named one of the Best Books of 2024 by The Times (U.K.).
As described by the judges of the International Book Prize, Eurotrash is 鈥渙ne of the most entertaining and ultimately moving stories we read. It is brilliantly, bitterly funny, even as it documents a vicious and tarnished emotional universe.鈥�
The judges called Bowles鈥� rendering 鈥渋mmaculately and wittily translated; on every page its sentences sparkle and surprise like guilty-legacy gold.鈥�
The six-book International Booker Prize shortlist will be released on April 8, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on May 20.
For more about the International Booker Prize, including an excerpt from Eurotrash, visit the .