{"id":20411,"date":"2017-04-18T13:57:53","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T17:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=20411"},"modified":"2017-06-16T22:41:49","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T02:41:49","slug":"the-2017-best-translated-book-award-shortlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2017\/04\/18\/the-2017-best-translated-book-award-shortlist\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2017 Best Translated Book Award Shortlist!"},"content":{"rendered":"

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” overlay_color=”” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” padding_top=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” padding_right=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=””][fusion_imageframe image_id=”20947″ style_type=”none” stylecolor=”” hover_type=”none” bordersize=”” bordercolor=”” borderradius=”” align=”none” lightbox=”no” gallery_id=”” lightbox_image=”” alt=”” link=”http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews” linktarget=”_self” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Header-2-1-e1493098728843.jpg[\/fusion_imageframe][fusion_text]<\/p>\n

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The 2017 Best Translated Book Award Shortlist has been announced!<\/p>\n

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Coffee House Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Among Strange Victims<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Daniel Saldana<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney<\/span>
\nMexico<\/span><\/p>\n

Slackers<\/em>\u00a0meets\u00a0Savage Detectives\u00a0<\/em>in this polyphonic ode to the pleasures of not measuring up.<\/p>\n

Rodrigo likes his vacant lot, its resident chicken, and being left alone. But when passivity finds him accidentally married to Cecilia, he trades Mexico City for the sun-bleached desolation of his hometown and domestic life with Cecilia for the debauched company of a poet, a philosopher, and Micaela, whose allure includes the promise of time travel. Earthy, playful, and sly, Among Strange Victims <\/i>is a psychedelic ode to the pleasures of not measuring up.<\/p>\n

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Open Letter Books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Lucio Cardoso<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa<\/span>
\nBrazil<\/span><\/p>\n

Long considered one of the most important works of twentieth-century Brazilian literature, Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/em> is finally available in English.<\/p>\n

Set in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the novel relates the dissolution of a once proud patri\u00adarchal family that blames its ruin on the youngest son Valdo\u2019s marriage to Nina\u2014a vibrant, unpredictable, and incendiary young woman whose very existence seems to depend on the destruction of the household. This family\u2019s downfall, peppered by stories of decadence, adultery, incest, and madness, is related through a variety of narrative devices, including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters.<\/p>\n

Salacious, literary, and introspective, Cardoso\u2019s masterpiece marked a turning away from the social realism fashionable in 1930s Brazilian literature and had a huge impact on the writing of Cardoso\u2019s life-long friend and greatest admirer\u2014Clarice Lispector.<\/p>\n

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Michigan State University Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Boubacar Boris Diop<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Wolof by Vera Wulfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop<\/span>
\nSenegal<\/span><\/p>\n

The first novel to be translated from Wolof to English, Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks<\/em> is a masterful work that conveys the story of Nguirane Faye and his attempts to communicate with his grandson before he dies. With a narrative structure that beautifully imitates the movements of a musical piece, Diop relates Faye\u2019s trauma of losing his only son, Assane Tall, which is compounded by his grandson Badou\u2019s migration to an unknown destination. While Faye feels certain that his grandson will return one day, he also is convinced that he will no longer be alive by then. Faye spends his days sitting under a mango tree in the courtyard of his home, reminiscing and observing his surroundings. He speaks to Badou through his seven notebooks, six of which are revealed to the reader, while the seventh, the \u201cBook of Secrets,\u201d is highly confidential and reserved for Badou\u2019s eyes only. In the absence of letters from Badou, the notebooks form the only possible means of communication between the two, carrying within them tunes and repetitions that give this novel its unusual shape: loose and meandering on the one hand, coherent and tightly interwoven on the other. Translated by Vera W\u00fclfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop.<\/p>\n

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Deep Vellum Publishing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eve Out of Her Ruins<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Ananda Devi<\/span>
\ntranslated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman<\/span>
\nMauritius<\/span><\/p>\n

With brutal honesty and poetic urgency, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country\u2019s endless cycle of fear and violence: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve\u2019s best friend, the only one who loves Eve without self-interest, who has plans to leave but will not go alone; Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, inspired by Rimbaud, in love with Eve; Cl\u00e9lio, belligerent rebel, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.<\/p>\n

Eve Out of Her Ruins<\/em> is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society. Awarded the prestigious\u00a0Prix des cinq continents<\/em> upon publication as the best book written in French outside of France,\u00a0Eve Out of Her Ruins<\/em> is a harrowing account of the violent reality of life in her native country by the figurehead of Mauritian literature.<\/p>\n

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Knopf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ladivine<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Marie NDiaye<\/span>
\ntranslated from the French by Jordan Stump<\/span>
\nFrance<\/span><\/p>\n

On the first Tuesday of every month, Clarisse Rivi\u00e8re leaves her husband and young daughter and secretly takes the train to Bordeaux to visit her mother, Ladivine. Just as Clarisse\u2019s husband and daughter know nothing of Ladivine, Clarisse herself has hidden nearly every aspect of her adult life from this woman, whom she dreads and despises but also pities. Long ago abandoned by Clarisse\u2019s father, Ladivine works as a housecleaner and has no one but her daughter, whom she knows as Malinka.<\/p>\n

After more than twenty-five years of this deception, the idyllic middle-class existence Clarisse has built from scratch can no longer survive inside the walls she\u2019s put up to protect it. Her untold anguish leaves her cold and guarded, her loved ones forever trapped outside, looking in. When her husband, Richard, finally leaves her, Clarisse finds comfort in the embrace of a volatile local man, Freddy Moliger. With Freddy, she finally feels reconciled to, or at least at ease with, her true self. But this peace comes at a terrible price. Clarisse will be brutally murdered, and it will be left to her now-grown daughter, who also bears the name Ladivine without knowing why, to work out who her mother was and what happened to her.<\/p>\n

A mesmerizing and heart-stopping psychological tale of a trauma that ensnares three generations of women, Ladivine<\/i> proves Marie NDiaye to be one of Europe\u2019s great storytellers.<\/p>\n

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New Vessel Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Oblivion<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Sergei Lebedev<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Russian by Antonina Bouis<\/span>
\nRussia<\/span><\/p>\n

In one of the first twenty-first century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. What he finds, among the forgotten mines and decrepit barracks of former gulags, is a world relegated to oblivion, where it is easier to ignore both the victims and the executioners than to come to terms with a terrible past. This disturbing tale evokes the great and ruined beauty of a land where man and machine worked in tandem with nature to destroy millions of lives during the Soviet century. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.<\/p>\n

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Oneworld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Umami<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Laia Jufresa<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes<\/span>
\nMexico<\/span><\/p>\n

It started with a drowning.<\/p>\n

Deep in the heart of Mexico City, where five houses cluster around a sun-drenched courtyard, lives Ana, a precocious twelve-year-old still coming to terms with the mysterious death of her little sister years earlier. Over the rainy, smoggy summer she decides to plant a vegetable garden in the courtyard, and as she digs the ground and plants her seeds, her neighbors in turn delve into their past. As the ripple effects of grief, childlessness, illness and displacement saturate their stories, secrets seep out and questions emerge – Who was my wife? Why did my mom leave? Can I turn back the clock? And how could a girl who knew how to swim drown?<\/p>\n

Using five voices to tell the singular story of life in an inner city mews, Umami\u00a0<\/em>is a quietly devastating novel of missed encounters, missed opportunities, missed people, and those who are left behind. Compassionate, surprising, funny and inventive, it deftly unpicks their stories to offer a darkly comic portrait of contemporary Mexico, as whimsical as it is heart-wrenching.<\/p>\n

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Pantheon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

War and Turpentine<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Stefan Hertmans<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Flemish by David McKay<\/span>
\nBelgium<\/span><\/p>\n

The life of Urbain Martien\u2014artist, soldier, survivor of World War I\u2014lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. In War and Turpentine,<\/i> his grandson, a writer, retells his grandfather\u2019s story, the notebooks providing a key to the locked chambers of Urbain\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n

With vivid detail, the grandson recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father\u2019s work;dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; being haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this tale, the grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine<\/i> paints an extraordinary portrait of one man\u2019s life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations.<\/p>\n

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Mandel Vilar Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wicked Weeds<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Pedro Cabiya<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Jessica Ernst Powell<\/span>
\nDominican Republic<\/span><\/p>\n

Set at the contact zones between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this is a polyphonic novel, an intense and sometimes funny pharmacopeia of love lost and humanity regained; a most original combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction addressing issues of global relevance including novel takes on ecological\/apocalyptical imbalance bound to make an impact.<\/p>\n

A Caribbean zombie — smart, gentlemanly, financially independent, and a top executive at an important pharmaceutical company — becomes obsessed with finding the formula that would reverse his condition and allow him to become “a real person.” In the process, three of his closest collaborators (cerebral and calculating Isadore, wide-eyed and sentimental Mathilde, and rambunctious Patricia), guide the reluctant and baffled scientist through the unpredictable intersections of love, passion, empathy, and humanity. But the playful maze of jealousy and amorous intrigue that a living being would find easy to negotiate represents an insurmountable tangle of dangerous ambiguities for our “undead” protagonist.<\/p>\n

Wicked Weeds<\/em> is put together from Isadore’s scrapbook, where she has collected her boss’ scientific goals and existential agony, as well as her own reflections about growing up as a Haitian descendant in the Dominican Republic and what it really means to be human. The end result is a precise combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction, Latin American style.<\/p>\n

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NYRB Classics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Zama<\/span><\/strong><\/em>
\nby Antonio Di Benedetto<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Spanish by Esther Allen<\/span>
\nArgentina<\/span><\/p>\n

Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, weirdly archaic and powerfully novel, Zama<\/i> takes place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown who has been posted to Asunci\u00f3n, the capital of remote Paraguay. There, eaten up by pride, lust, petty grudges, and paranoid fantasies, he does as little as he possibly can while plotting his eventual transfer to Buenos Aires, where everything about his hopeless existence will, he is confident, be miraculously transformed and made good.<\/p>\n

Don Diego\u2019s slow, nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man\u2019s perdition but an exploration of existential, and very American, loneliness. Zama<\/i>, with its stark dreamlike prose and spare imagery, is at once dense and unforeseen, terse and fateful, marked throughout by a haunting movement between sentences, paragraphs, and sections, so that every word seems to emerge from an ocean of things left unsaid. The philosophical depths of this great book spring directly from its dazzling prose.<\/p>\n

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