Three of the six books shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026 are set during moments when a government turned on its own people. One takes place in Iran after the 1979 revolution. Another unfolds in Nazi-controlled Austria. A third is set inside a brutal Brazilian prison colony in a remote wilderness. A fourth follows a young woman in the Albanian Alps who must renounce her gender to survive a patriarchal system that offers her no other way out. The judges selected these six books from 128 submissions spanning five languages and four continents. They could have chosen love stories....