Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013

The long- list for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced on Saturday as follows:

•The Detour, by Gerbrand Bakker; tr from the Dutch by David Colmer
•Bundu, by Chris Barnard; tr. from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns
•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
•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
•Satantango, by Laszlo Krasznahorkai; tr. from the Hungarian by George Szirtes
•Black Bazaar, by Alain Mabanckou; tr. from 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
•Dublinesque, by Enrique Vila-Matas; tr. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean

This year I’ve read a grand total of three of the books already:

• Trieste
• The Fall of the Stone City
• Dublinesque (unfortunatley no review for this)

Four of the books are also on the long-list for the Best Translated Book Award: A Death in the Family (published in the US as My Struggle); Santantango; Traveller of the Century; and Dublinesque.

As last year, I intend to read as many as I can, although this does tend to favour the shorter texts – unfortunate as I would imagine that Traveller of the Century must be one of the front-runners. I may just have to hope it makes it to the short-list next month!

Tags: independent foreign fiction prize 2013