Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist

Here are the sixteen books on the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist, which comes to us just a few days before the Best Translated Book longlist (which I’m really looking forward to). This is an exceptional list of books. Since this is a British prize, some of the books have been published in the U.S. by different names or have not yet been published here. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve indicated where such is the case.

• The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker; tr from the Dutch by David Colmer (this is just out in the U.S. as Ten White Geese)
  
• Bundu, by Chris Barnard; tr. from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (this will be available in the U.S. on May 1, 2013)
• HHhH, by Laurent Binet; tr. from the French by Sam Taylor
• Trieste, by Dasa Drndic; tr. from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac
• Cold Sea Stories, by Pawel Huelle; tr. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• The Murder of Halland, by Pia Juul; tr. from the Danish by Martin Aitken (this one appears to be available here but is published by Peirene Press from the U.K.)
• The Fall of the Stone City, by Ismail Kadare; tr. from the Albanian by John Hodgson
• In Praise of Hatred, by Khaled Khalifa; tr. from the Arabic by Leri Price
• A Death in the Family, by Karl Ove Knausgaard; tr. from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (published in the U.S. as My Struggle: Book One)
• Satantango, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai; tr. from the Hungarian by George Szirtes
• Black Bazaar, by Alain Mabanckou; tr. form the French by Sarah Ardizzone
• The Last of the Vostyachs, by Diego Marani; tr. from the Italian by Judith Landry
• Traveller of the Century, by Andrés Neuman; tr. from the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia
• Silent House, by Orhan Pamuk; tr. from the Turkish by Robert Finn
• The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez; tr. from the Spanish by Anne McLean (this will be available in the U.S. on August 1, 2013)
• Dublinesque, by Enrique Vila-Matas; tr. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean

According to Chad Post, organizer of the Best Translated Book Award, there are three titles above that are also on the BTBA list. Since a few (like Bakker, Barnard, Kadare, Vásquez, etc.) are not eligible because they weren’t published in the U.S. last year, we can limit this a bit and speculate. My guess is that the BTBA list shares these three: Dublinesque, Satantango, and A Death in the Family (only it will be called My Struggle here). HHhH has been popular this year, but at least one of the judges of the BTBA did not like it. Of course, my guess above leaves off former longlistees Pamuk and Marani, as well as Neuman’s Traveller of the Century. So while I can’t imagine the BTBA longlist without Vila-Matas, Krasznahorkai, and Knausgaard, I also think some of these others have a good shot.

EDIT: I see that on Chad Post’s write-up he is saying that A Death in the Family was not published last year in the U.S. and therefore is not eligible. I think he’s thinking of the next book in the series, entitled A Man in Love in the UK (My Struggle: Book 2 in the U.S. when it comes out in May; it will come out in April in the UK). A Death in the Family was published in the U.S. last year as My Struggle by Archipelago Books. Therefore, it would appear that this is not one of the three books that overlap with the IFFP. Does that mean it is not on the BTBA so Chad just didn’t pay it much attention, or does that mean that there are actually four books that overlap? Or maybe it is one of the three and Chad just wasn’t paying attention when he wrote his intro. Or maybe I’m misreading something.