The Witch shortlisted

Marie NDiaye’s *The Witch*, translated from French by Jordan Stump, is one of six books shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize. (thebookerprizes.com) The Booker Prize Foundation announced the shortlist on March 31, 2026, and said the winner will be named on May 19, 2026, at Tate Modern in London. Each shortlisted book brings £5,000, split equally between author and translator. (thebookerprizes.com) The prize covers fiction translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland between May 1, 2025, and April 30, 2026. This year’s six-book shortlist was chosen from a 13-book longlist and 128 submitted titles. (thebookerprizes.com) That structure puts the translator on the prize line with the novelist: the £50,000 winner’s purse is divided equally between author and translator. The Booker Prize Foundation describes the award as recognition for translated fiction in its current form entering its 10th year in 2026. (thebookerprizes.com) *The Witch* stands out on the shortlist as the oldest book in the field. The Booker Prize Foundation said it was first published in French 30 years ago, in the 1990s setting the foundation also highlights in its shortlist guide. (thebookerprizes.com) The novel follows Lucie, whom the Booker site describes as a mediocre witch in a small French town, trying to pass her powers to twin daughters whose gifts quickly surpass her own. Judges said the language of NDiaye’s novel and Stump’s translation is “exquisite,” with sentences that “twist and transform in unexpected ways.” (thebookerprizes.com) Stump is a professor of French at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, which said his translation was published by Penguin Random House on April 7, 2026. He told the university he “did not expect this at all,” partly because the translation had not yet been published and because the novel is 30 years old. (news.unl.edu) This is not the first time NDiaye and Stump have appeared in the prize’s orbit. The Booker Prize Foundation said the pair were longlisted in 2016 for *Ladivine*, and the Nebraska report said Stump’s translation of *The Cheffe* won the American Literary Translators Association’s prose prize in 2021. (thebookerprizes.com; news.unl.edu) The 2026 shortlist also includes books by Shida Bazyar, Rene Karabash, Daniel Kehlmann, Ana Paula Maia and Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from five original languages. On this list, *The Witch* puts a 1996 French novel and its 2026 English translation into the same prize conversation. (thebookerprizes.com)