Man Booker shortlist for 2018

Amonster story set in Baghdad and a meditation on the colour white are among the nominees for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. The list of finalists includes Iraqi writer Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad, which depicts real and imaginary horrors after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

South Korea's Han Kang, who won in 2016 for The Vegetarian is nominated again for her meditative novel, The White Book. Novels from France, Spain, Hungary and Poland are also on the list.

The prize is a counterpart to the Man Booker Prize for English-language novels and is open to books published in any language that have been translated into English. The £50,000 award is split evenly between the writer and the translator.

In 2017, David Grossman took home the prize for A Horse Walks Into a Bar. It was translated by Jessica Cohen. A week later, sales of the book increased by 1,367 per cent, resulting in Penguin having to reprint it 10 times because of consumer demand.  In its first year, it sold 53 times more than Grossman's previous paperback book, Falling Out of Time.

George Saunders won the Man Booker prize in 2017, for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the UK.

Ahead of the winner announcement, there will be several public events featuring some of the judges, authors and translators including a "Translation at its Finest" event in partnership with Foyles and English PEN on May 17 this year and a Man Booker International Prize event with Waterstones on May 21. The winner of this year's contest will be announced the following day. — The Independent

Vernon Subutex-1 by Virginie Despentes; Translated by Frank Wynne. 

The White Book by Han Kang; translated by Deborah Smith. 

The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai; translated by George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet and John Batki.  

Like a Fading Shadow: A Novel by Antonio Muñoz Molina;  translated by Camilo A. Ramirez. 

Frankenstein in Baghdad: A Novel by Ahmed Saadawi

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk; translated by Jennifer Croft.