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I’m thrilled at hearing this year’s Best Translated Book winner:
- Stone Upon Stone, by Wieslaw Mysliwski, tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston
I haven’t reviewed this book yet, but I finished it a few weeks ago and had a feeling it would win. It is superb, and I do (and will) highly recommend it. The award is young, but this is the second time that Archipelago Books published the winning title . . . meaning if you’re not familiar with them, you should be.
Click here for the announcement on the Three Percent blog.
I’m late posting this, but on April 17 the shortlist for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction was announced:
- Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan (my review here)
- The Forgotten Walz, by Anne Enright
- Painter of Silence, by Georgina Harding
- The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
- Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick (my review here)
- State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett (my review here)
I was thrilled to see Enright and Ozick on the shortlist. I certainly did not expect to see them there. The winner will be announced on May 30. My vote goes to Ozick.
For the first time since 1977, the Pulitzer committee elected to honor no work of fiction.
The three nominated finalists were:
- Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson (my review here)
- Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell (my review here)
- The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace
Today the finalists for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award were announced (links to my (few) reviews in parenthesis):
- Rocks in the Belly, by Jon Bauer
- The Matter with Morris, by David Bergen (click here for my review)
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (click here for my review)
- The Memory of Love, by Aminatta Forna
- Even the Dogs, by Jon McGregor
- Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes
- Landed, by Tim Pears
- Limassol, by Yishai Sarid, tr. from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav
- The Eternal Son, by Cristovão Tezza, tr. from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin
- Lean on Pete, by Willy Vlautin
Today the ten finalists for the Best Translated Book Award were announced, whittling away at the longlist of twenty-five (click here for the longlist). Here they are:
- Lightning, by Jean Echenoz, tr. from the French by Linda Coverdale (New Press)
- Upstaged, by Jacques Jouet, tr. from the French by Leland de la Durantaye (Dalkey Archive)
- Kornél Esti, by Dezsö Kosztolányi, tr. from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams (New Directions)
- I Am a Japanese Writer, by Dany Laferrière, tr. from the French by David Hormel (Douglas & MacIntyre)
- New Finnish Grammar, by Diego Marani, tr. from the Italian by Judith Landry (Dedalus)
- Stone Upon Stone, by Wieslaw Mysliwski, tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)
- Scars, by Juan José Saer, tr. from the Spanish by Steve Dolph (Open Letter)
- Kafka’s Leopards, by Moacyr Scliar, tr. from the Portuguese by Thomas O. Beebee (Texas Tech University Press)
- In Red, by Magdelena Tulli, tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)
- Never Any End to Paris, tr. from the Enrique Vila-Matas (New Directions)
Since the longlist was announced on February 29, I have been trying to get through a number of the books, and to date I have read eleven. Of the seven finalists I’ve read to now, the only one on this list that I’m a bit surprised by is Upstaged, which was fun but . . . well, I must have missed something of the Republicanism or something. I also didn’t particularly care for New Finnish Grammar, but I can see why others like it.
Here are links to my reviews:
- Lightning (click here)
- Upstaged (click here)
- Kornél Esti (click here)
- New Finnish Grammar (click here)
- Stone Upon Stone (forthcoming)
- Scars (click here)
- Kafka’s Leopards (click here)
- In Red (forthcoming)
- Never Any End to Paris (click here)
The winner of this year’s PEN/Faulkner was announced this morning.
- The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka
The winner gets $15,000. I have this book on hand and have been meaning to read it since it was also a finalist for the National Book Award back in November. It’s short enough I just need to get to it.
Here are the other finalists, each of whom receive $5,000 (making it a good week for Don DeLillo and Steven Millhauser who also took home some money for The Story Prize).
- Russell Banks for Lost Memory of Skin
- Don DeLillo for The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories
- Anita Desai for The Artist of Disappearance
- Steven Millhauser for We Others: New and Selected Stories (my review here)
For the official press release, click here.
This past week the winner of The Story Prize was announced, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.
- We Others, by Steven Millhauser (my review here)
I loved this collection, and I’m glad Millhauser walked away with the $20,000 winnings. The other two finalists (who each get $5,000) were Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman and The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo. I haven’t paid much attention to this relatively new award before, but I will be from now on. I’ve added a page to follow it here.
Tonight the NBCC Award winners were announced.
- Fiction: Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories, by Edith Pearlman
- Nonfiction: Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary War, by Maya Jasanoff
- Biography: George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis
- Poetry: Space, in Chains, by Laura Kasischke
- Autobiography: The Memory Palace: A Memoir, by Mira Bartók
- Criticism: Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, by Geoff Dyer
I have read about five of the stories in Binocular Vision and can only say that I hope this win gets Edith Pearlman read more — it’s excellent.
Yesterday the longlist for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction was announced:
- Island of Wings, by Karin Altenberg
- On the Floor, by Aifric Campbell
- The Grief of Others, by Leah Hager Cohen
- The Sealed Letter, by Emma Donoghue
- Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan (my review here)
- The Forgotten Waltz, by Anne Enright
- The Flying Man, by Roopa Farooki
- Lord of Misrule, by Jaimy Gordon (my review here)
- Painter of Silence, by Georgina Harding
- Gillespie and I, by Jane Harris
- The Translation of the Bones, by Francesca Kay
- The Blue Book, by A.L. Kennedy
- The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
- The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller
- Foreign Bodies, by Cynthia Ozick (my review here)
- State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett (my review here)
- There but for the, by Ali Smith
- The Pink Hotel, by Anna Stothard
- Tides of War, by Stella Tillyard
- The Submission, by Amy Waldman
I have read only four of them (links to the reviews above), and would rank those as follows: (1) Foreign Bodies (this is Ozick, so I am obligated to love it — and I did), (2) Lord of Misrule (I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book about horse racing — or, rather, about the unfortunates crowding around the horse races), (3) Half-Blood Blues (I liked this one much more than I was expecting and wouldn’t have been upset had it won the Booker last year), and then State of Wonder (this one was also better than I thought but was much less to my taste — the story comes before the development of any interesting ideas here).
My positive response to the four I read means I might like many more on this list. My focus over the next few months will be on the Best Translated Book Award longlist (the list here), but I’ve been meaning to slip in Gillespie and I and The Forgotten Walz (after all, I need to have read some of the books written in Great Britain and Ireland as they put together the prize!).
The shortlist will be announced on April 17 and the winner on May 30.
This is exciting news! I’ve been waiting for this list for over a month since last year the longlist was announced at the end of January. Click here for the official announcement on the Three Percent blog. And here is the list of 25 titles — if this isn’t the most exciting list of books I’ve seen in a while . . . well, there’s no “if”: this is the most exciting list of titles I’ve seen in a long while.
- Leeches, by David Albahari, tr. from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursac (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- My Two Worlds, by Sergio Chejfec, tr. from the Spanish by Margaret B. Carson (Open Letter)
- Demolishing Nisard, by Eric Chevillard, tr. from the French by Jordan Stump (Dalkey Archive)
- Private Property, by Paule Constant, tr. from the French by Margot Miller and France Grenaudier-Klijn (University of Nebraska Press)
- Lightning, by Jean Echenoz, tr. from the French by Linda Coverdale (New Press)
- Zone, by Mathias Énard, tr. from the French by Charlotte Mandell (Open Letter)
- Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?, by Johan Harstad, tr. from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin (Seven Stories)
- Upstaged, by Jacques Jouet, tr. from the French by Leland de la Durantaye (Dalkey Archive)
- Fiasco, by Imre Kertész, tr. from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson (Melville House)
- Montecore, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, tr. from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles (Knopf)
- Kornél Esti, by Dezsö Kosztolányi, tr. from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams (New Directions)
- I Am a Japanese Writer, by Dany Laferrière, tr. from the French by David Hormel (Douglas & MacIntyre)
- Suicide, by Edouard Levé, tr. from the French by Jan Steyn (Dalkey Archive)
- New Finnish Grammar, by Diego Marani, tr. from the Italian by Judith Landry (Dedalus)
- Purgatory, by Tomás Eloy Martínez, tr. from the Spanish by Frank Wynne (Bloomsbury)
- Stone Upon Stone, by Wieslaw Mysliwski, tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)
- Scenes from Village Life, by Amos Oz, tr. from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- The Shadow-Boxing Woman, by Inka Parei, tr. from the German by Katy Derbyshire (Seagull Books)
- Funeral for a Dog, by Thomas Pletzinger, tr. from the German by Ross Benjamin (W.W. Norton)
- Scars, by Juan José Saer, tr. from the Spanish by Steve Dolph (Open Letter)
- Kafka’s Leopards, by Moacyr Scliar, tr. from the Portuguese by Thomas O. Beebee (Texas Tech University Press)
- Seven Years, by Peter Stamm, tr. from the German by Michael Hofmann (Other Press)
- The Truth About Mary, by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint, tr. from the French by Matthew B. Smith (Dalkey Archive)
- In Red, by Magdelena Tulli, tr. from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)
- Never Any End to Paris, tr. from the Enrique Vila-Matas (New Directions)
I have read only four of these and have four more on the shelf waiting for me. I can’t wait to learn more about the ones I’m unfamiliar with and hope to get through a number of these before the ten finalists are announced on April 10. The winner will be announed as part of the PEN World Voices Festival later in the spring.
Some statistics.
Run down by language: French (8), Spanish (4), German (3), Hungarian (2), Polish (2), Serbian (1), Norwegian (1), Swedish (1), Italian (1), Hebrew (1), Portuguese (1).
This list comes from 17 publishers! I’m sad that NYRB Classics was shut out, though I don’t know how many eligible titles they published this year (I would have voted for Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s The Letter Killers Club (my review here)). However, a few other favorites have strong representation: Dalkey Archive (4), Open Letter (3), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2), New Directions (2), and Archipelago Books (2). All have catalogs worth following.
Here are links to my reviews of what I’ve read so far:
With a list this good, I don’t know where to turn next.
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Here are links to the reviews of some of the books that I’ve read subsequent to posting this:
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