The International Booker Prize shortlist

Heartbreak, family love and approaches to coping with poverty are all among the topics tackled by this year’s six International Booker Prize nominees. The prestigious award is for to fiction translated into English.

Among the nominated titles is Hwang Sok-yong’s “Mater 2-10,” translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae. The political novel traces North and South Korean history through a family of railway workers and provides a rarely heard “worker’s-eye view of the 20th-century history surrounding Korea’s partition,” The Guardian wrote in a review.