The Man Booker International Prize will now celebrate translated fiction
The biennial prize awarded to a body of work emanating from anywhere in the world but published in English will now instead be awarded yearly for a single novel or collection of short stories translated into English.
Essentially the International Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize are being combined into a single £50,000 award which, starting in 2016, will be split equally between the writer and his or her translator.
The reason for the change, according to the award's organizers, is that only 3% of all books and 1% of novels published in the UK and the US every year have been translated from a foreign language.
Introducing a new prize specifically to honor translated works will help to boost these figures, helping writers reach the widest possible audiences.
The 2016 prize will be open for entries from July 9, 2015.
