The International Booker Prize for the year 2020 is won by 29-year-old Dutch author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for debut novel, "The Discomfort of Evening", translated into English by Michele Hutchison, thus becoming the youngest author ever to win the prize.

The book beat titles including Yōko Ogawa’s The Memory Police and Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree to win the £50,000 award for the best fiction translated into English, which will be split equally with their translator, Michele Hutchison.

“A bestselling sensation in the Netherlands by a prize-winning young poet, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld’s debut novel lays everything bare. It is a world of language unlike any other, which Michele Hutchison’s striking translation captures in all its wild, violent beauty,” the International Booker Prize mentioned on their website.

The book revolves around a young girl Jas angry for not being allowed to accompany her brother to ice-skating wishes death upon his brother instead of her rabbit and it happens so. Lost in grief, her family falls apart and been vividly describes the dangerous fantasies that Jas becomes involved.

The story follows the life experience of Rijneveld who grew up in a strict christian family in a rural area of the Netherlands. She works on a dairy farm and says the cows are her best friends. Receiving the prize, Rijneveld said: “I can only say that I am as proud as a cow with seven udders” and called it “a great honour”.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)