Round-Up: Man Booker Longlist, Obama’s Intro, and International Women’s Day
From the first ever longlist for the Man Booker International Prize to reading lists inspired by International Women’s Day, here’s last week’s literary news:
- The longlist for the Man Booker International Prize was announced last week. This is the first time Man Booker has released a longlist for the prize, which “celebrates the finest in global fiction.” The thirteen books in contention include Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions), Aki Ollikainen’s White Hunger (Peirene Press), and Marie NDiaye’s Ladivine (Maclehose Press). Read the entire list of nominees.
- President Barack Obama wrote the introduction for the twenty-fifth volume of The Complete Peanuts–a collection of all fifty years of the iconic comic strips series. “Like millions of Americans, I grew up with Peanuts. But I never outgrew it,” Obama writes. This isn’t the first time Obama has been associated with Peanuts. Last year, he and Michelle introduced the Peanuts Christmas special on ABC.
- March 8th was International Women’s Day, and the internet was abuzz with female-centric reading lists. Bustle featured “15 Books To Read This International Women’s Day,” India Today gave us the best heroines from fiction, and Broadly shared a list of important women to read about. We joined in on the festivities and shared an Instagram post highlighting our first female guest editor, Fanny Howe.