History is made with this year's International Booker longlist

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has made International Booker Prize history on multiple levels.

He is both the first person to be nominated for both writing and translating a work, and he’s the first to be nominated for writing in an indigenous African language (the Bantu language Gikuyu).

The Guardian, in its post announcing the International Booker longlist, shares more of Thiong’o’s remarkable background.

It also notes that this year’s list includes eleven languages and twelve countries, with just one writer and one translator having received the nods before.

Here are the nominees; this list will be winnowed to six on April 22, with an overall winner being revealed June 2. 

• I Live in the Slums, written by Can Xue and translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping.

• At Night All Blood is Black, written by David Diop and translated from French by Anna Mocschovakis

• The Pear Field, written by Nana Ekvtimishvili and translated from Georgian by Elizabeth Heighway

• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, written by Mariana Enríquez and translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell

• When We Cease to Understand the World, written by Benjamín Labatut and translated from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West

• The Perfect Nine: The Epic Gikuyu and Mumbi, written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and translated from Gikuyu by the author

• The Employees, written by Olga Ravn and translated from Danish by Martin Aitken

• Summer Brother, written by Jaap Robben and translated from Dutch by David Doherty

• An Inventory of Losses, written by Judith Schalansky and translated from German by Jackie Smith

• Minor Detail, written by Adania Shibli and translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette

• In Memory of Memory, written by Maria Stepanova and translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale

• Wretchedness, written by Andrzej Tichý and translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley 

• The War of the Poor, written by Éric Vuillard and translated from French by Mark Polizzotti

The £50,000 ($64,400) prize is split amongst the author and translator or translators.