Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has won the International Booker Prize.
Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has won the 2020 International Booker Prize for translated fiction for the novel The Discomfort of Evening.
Rijneveld and translator Michele Hutchison shared the award for a debut novel that follows a 10-year-old girl growing up on a Dutch dairy farm with her devout religious family.
Ted Hodgkinson, the chair of this year's judges, praised the "astonishing novel," highlighting the "sheer poetry of its perceptions".
"I am proud as a cow with seven udders," said Rijneveld, who still works on a dairy farm, by video link after Hodgkinson relayed the judges' decision.
Hodgkinson said the judges had looked for a novel that "echoes the dystopian world we all now seem to inhabit".
Australian Associated Press
