Man Booker International Prize shortlist announced

The globe-spanning award whisks readers from war-torn Angola to the burgeoning urban centre of Istanbul

The Man Booker International Prize has revealed its 2016 shortlist, with 6 books in contention for the Prize, spanning from war-torn Angola to the burgeoning urban centre of Istanbul.

The award recognises the finest entries in global fiction, helping to bring acclaim to works and novelists sometimes neglected by the English-centric canon. The Booker Prize Foundation first announced on 7 July 2015 that it would be changing the format of the Prize to recognise fiction in translation as opposed simply to works in a language other than English; the aim being to encourage the publishing of translated works in the hope more readers will be able to access international material.

Five of the authors in the list have been nominated here for the first time, with Chinese author Yan Lianke having previously appeared on the list of finalists in 2013; two have previously been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, José Eduardo Agualusa in 2007 and Orhan Pamuk in 1990. Turkish author Pamuk had previously won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

Joining forces with The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the award will now also celebrate a single work of fiction, as opposed to awarding the Prize every two years for an author's entire body of work. The judging panel will be headed by Boyd Tonkin, senior writer at The Independent, with a further four judges soon to be announced. The overall winner will be announced 16 May, at a formal dinner held at the V&A; the £50,000 prize will then be divided equally between the author and translator of the winning entry.

"This exhilarating shortlist will take readers both around the globe and to every frontier of fiction," Tonkin stated. "In first-class translations that showcase that unique and precious art, these six books tell unforgettable stories from China and Angola, Austria and Turkey, Italy and South Korea. In setting, they range from a Mao-era re-education camp and a remote Alpine valley to the modern tumult and transformation of cities such as Naples and Istanbul."

"In form, the titles stretch from a delicate mosaic of linked lives in post-colonial Africa to a mesmerising fable of domestic abuse and revolt in booming east Asia. Our selection shows that the finest books in translation extend the boundaries not just of our world - but of the art of fiction itself."

The full list can be found below:

José Eduardo Agualusa's A General Theory of Oblivion (Angola); translated by Daniel Hahn

Elena Ferrante's The Story of the Lost Child (Italy); translated by Ann Goldstein

Han Kang's The Vegetarian (South Korea); translated by Deborah Smith

Yan Lianke's The Four Books (China); translated by Carlos Rojas

Orhan Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind (Turkey); translated by Ekin Oklap

Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life (Austria); translated by Charlotte Collins