Ten novels have been selected for the 2014 IMPAC shortlist.
- The Detour (published in the U.S. as Ten White Geese), by Gerbrand Bakker; tr. from the Dutch by David Colmer
- Questions of Travel, by Michelle De Kretser
- Absolution, by Patrick Flanery
- A Death in the Family (published in the U.S. as My Struggle: Book 1), by Karl Ove Knausgaard; tr. from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
- Three Strong Women, by Marie NDiaye; tr. from the French by John Fletcher
- Traveller of the Century (published in the U.S. as Traveler of the Century :-) ), by Andrés Neuman; tr. from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia
- The Light of Amsterdam, by David Park
- The Spinning Heart, by Donal Ryan
- The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng
- The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez; tr. from the Spanish by Anne McLean
Hi Trevor, if you’re looking for reviews to harvest again, I can help with a few of them:
The Detour http://wp.me/phTIP-501
Questions of Travel http://wp.me/phTIP-5zD (Go, Aussies, go!)
Traveller of the Century http://wp.me/phTIP-5U6
The Garden of Evening Mists http://wp.me/phTIP-5CK
I disliked A Death in the Family intensely and you liked it a lot if I recall correctly, so you may not want to use that one! (http://wp.me/phTIP-5Lx)
Thanks Lisa — of course I want your review of Knausgaard :-) . I’ll get these added in the morning.
LOL I’m ready to duck for cover then!
Hi Trevor,
This is just a suggestion for the site that you can take or leave, as I’m not sure how easy or difficult this would be to do. I find these posts about the various literary prizes invaluable for deciding which books to check out in future, but I feel like some of these books are showing up on more than one list, perhaps even two or three, and I may have already checked them out. Would it be possible to add an index to these prize posts, maybe along the top like you’ve done for “index by author” etc.?
Thanks! And thanks for putting together these posts in the first place.
Hello Julie, I can’t speak for Trevor but what you’re suggesting looks like a daunting task to me, so I wonder if you know that that you very collate all this, with the help of other users at GoodReads and at other similar sites? There are four books on this list that I’m interested in but don’t have yet, so I’ve located them at GR, added them to my wishlist and create a shelf called ‘2014 IMPAC for them. I’ll add the others that I’ve reviewed to that shelf too.
When I do that, I’ll be able to see that Questions of Travel has been nominated for other awards for which I’ve created shelves, but also many of the books at GR have information about which awards they’ve won anyway in the book info with the blurb etc. If you look at The Sound of Things Falling, for example. at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16701929-the-sound-of-things-falling you can see that it’s been nominated for the IFFP besides the IMPAC, and won two other prizes, and you can also see what genres other uses have allocated it to.
Oops, typos all over my reply, sorry: that 2nd line should read ‘I wonder if you know that you can very easily collate all this’ –
Hi Juliemcl and Lisa. Julie, could you explain a bit more what you’re looking for? If it’s just an index you can click on to see these posts, I can do that easily, though I’m not sure how helpful it would be because I do not cover all book prizes. If you’re looking for a more extensive index that lists books and the prizes they’ve been nominated for, then that would certainly be more work — a lot more work, I think. But let me know a bit more what you’re thinking.
Lisa’s suggestion to use Goodreads is something I’d echo, though Goodreads is maintained by librarians (like me — I’m a Goodreads librarian) who may not have looked into prizes when inputting book information.
PS Tony’s got a review of Spinning Heart at http://anokatony.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/the-spinning-heart-by-donal-ryan-the-new-dark-ages-in-ireland/
Hi Trevor and Lisa, thanks for your replies. I was looking for something more like what Trevor suggests – an index to the posts themselves, that is if it’s easy enough to do. I can always just go back through the archive month by month when I have some time and want to start adding to my goodreads to-read list!
Sorry, I should have explained the reason behind my request a little more clearly: because some of these books are appearing on more than one list, a couple of times while reading a new prize post I thought that I was reading an older post that I had already read. Like, there have been more than one or two posts about prizes for translated books, right? That’s why I think an index to the posts themselves might come in handy. Thanks!
I will definitely do that, Juliemcl. I’ve been meaning to organize them better anyway, and, with my general site overhaul, I can do this super easily.
. . . though it will probably be a few days at least :-) .
I’ve reviewed five of the ten at my blog:
The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/2013-independent-foreign-fiction-prize.html
A Death In The Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/my-struggle-book-one-death-in-family.html
The Traveller of the Century by Andreas Neuman http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/independent-foreign-fiction-prize_20.html
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/2013-booker-prize-longlist-spinning.html
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/2012-booker-shortlist-garden-of-evening.html