Around the world in 13 novels: this year’s longlist for the Booker Prize—one of the world’s most important award for fiction—encapsulates a vast range of international experiences, transporting readers to a farm in southern Malaysia, a Hungarian housing estate and a small coastal town in Greece. They shine a light on the lives of Koreans in postcolonial Japan, a homesick Indian in snowy Vermont, a Kosovar torture survivor living in New York, a shrimp fisherman in the north of England, a mother whose child was given up for adoption in Venezuela and even endangered snails in contemporary Ukraine. They reimagine the great American road trip as a slow-burning mid-life crisis, and take us into the heart of the UK’s coldest winter.

Arguably more than any other year in the prize’s history, this year’s longlist boasts a truly global outlook.