Over the past year, our literary editor, Fred Studeman, has been reading a lot more than he even usually does.

He read 134 books over about eight months.

That averages out to about a book a day.

And all of it was in service of one task, being a judge for the International Booker Prize. I mean, the sheer volume of books. Right. And you just think, how can I do this? And I rang someone up who'd been involved, and they said, basically, you know, if you've got a day job, and I thought, yes, I have. And if you've got a family, yes, I have. And if you've got, you know, very little time,

and I don't have much of that. You must be mad to do it. But thankfully, thankfully,

there were other people who made me see the wisdom of doing it, which is certainly the right thing

to do. The international booker is given in Britain, but it's one of those rare prizes that

matters all over the world.

Because each year, it honors a fiction book that was written in another language and then

translated and published in English.

Which means that Fred got to read stories from dozens of countries.

Mexico, Cote d'Ivoire, South Korea.

I mean, to me, the most mind-blowing thing of doing this whole thing was just

stepping out of the world I normally inhabit the sort of largely the sort of anglophone

literary world, you know, without being too pretentious about it.

And just going on this mad journey and seeing lots of different perspectives, even making you question what is a novel, you know, without being too pretentious about it, and just going on this mad journey and seeing

lots of different perspectives, even making you question what is a novel?

Mm-hmm.

The book that won the international booker comes from Bulgaria. It's called Time Shelter by Georgi

Gaspadanov. It's a story about a man who develops a sort of cult following by creating homes

for people with dementia that look and feel exactly like the years they grew up in. It allows

them to literally live in the past. But then suddenly nostalgia takes over and everyone starts to

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