I am usually ambivalent about literary prizes, although like a good hypocrite I mine the lists for reading suggestions. Somehow I missed the announcement for this year’s International Booker Prize and was surprised to discover that I had read three of the six nominees.

Launched in 2005, the International Booker Prize was originally given to an author for their life’s work, but since 2016 has been awarded to a single book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland. It comes with prize money of £50,000, about $64,000, which the winning author and translator share equally.

The six books include Solvej Balle’s “On the Calculation of Volume: 1” about a bookseller who relives the same day over and over again. “Under the Eye of the Big Bird,” by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda: a series of interconnected stories set in a dystopian future, in which the only remaining humans are produced in factories. Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection,” translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes, about an expatriate couple living in a hip Berlin neighborhood and struggling to engage with life outside their bubble.

Also the three that I haven’t read: “Small Boat” by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson: a fictionalized retelling of the 2021 sinking of a migrant boat that capsized on the journey from France to Britain, leading to 27 deaths. “Heart Lamp” by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada, a language spoken in southern India, by Deepa Bhasthi: a collection of short stories about Muslim women in India and dealing with family and community tensions. And, “A Leopard-Skin Hat” by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson: a novel about the relationship between an unnamed narrator and an anguished friend.

The judges will announce a winner on May 20 during a ceremony at Tate Modern in London.