Here are the six books to make the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist:

  • The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker; tr from the Dutch by David Colmer (in the U.S. this book was published 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)
  • Trieste, by Dasa Drndic; tr. from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac
  • The Fall of the Stone City, by Ismail Kadare; tr. from the Albanian by John Hodgson
  • Traveler of the Century, by Andrés Neuman; tr. from the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia
  • Dublinesque, by Enrique Vila-Matas; tr. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean

This is the second shortlist for translated fiction in two days, and the second to leave off one of my favorites: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle: Book One (or, A Death in the Family). At least this one has one of my favorites, Enrique Vila-Matas’s Dublinesque, and also picks up Traveler of the Century, both of which were left off the Best Translated Book Award shortlist. But now, here’s where I’m shocked: this list left off Krasznahorkai’s Satantango! As you can see, the Knausgaard, Vila-Matas, and Krasznahorkai would be on any shortlist I made.

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