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The longlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize “reveals a fictional eco-system of staggering diversity”, according to the Independent's Boyd Tonkin.
Announcing the longlist on the newspaper’s website this morning, Tonkin said he warmly recommended “each of our chosen books, both for their own singular virtues and the skill and flair of their translators”.
There are two novels each translated from Arabic, German, Japanese, French and Icelandic, with one each from Hebrew, Norwegian, Italian, Chinese and Spanish.
Among the best known names in the longlist of 15 is Norwegian Karl Ove Knausgaard’s A Man in Love (Harvill Secker), translated by Don Bartlett.
Three “accomplished sets of linked short stories make the cut”, said Tonkin - Hassan Blasim’s The Iraqi Christ (Comma Press), translated from Arabic by Jonathan Wright; Andrej Longo’s Ten (Harvill Secker), translated from Italian by Howard Curtis; and and Yoko Ogawa’s Revenge (Harvill Secker), translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder.
Penguin Random House imprint Harvill Secker has the most books on the list (four).
The shortlist of six will be announced at the London Book Fair on April 8th.
The full longlist:
Sinan Antoon The Corpse Washer (Arabic; translated by the author) Yale University Press
Hassan Blasim The Iraqi Christ (Arabic; trans. Jonathan Wright) Comma Press
Julia Franck Back to Back (German; trans. Anthea Bell) Harvill Secker
Sayed Kashua Exposure (Hebrew; trans. Mitch Ginsberg) Chatto & Windus
Hiromi Kawakami Strange Weather in Tokyo (Japanese; trans. Allison Markin Powell) Portobello Books
Karl Ove Knausgaard A Man in Love (Norwegian; trans. Don Bartlett) Harvill Secker
Andrej Longo Ten (Italian; trans. Howard Curtis) Harvill Secker
Ma Jian The Dark Road (Chinese; trans. Flora Drew) Chatto & Windus
Andreï Makine Brief Loves that Live Forever (French; trans. Geoffrey Strachan) MacLehose Press
Javier Marías The Infatuations (Spanish; trans. Margaret Jull Costa) Hamish Hamilton
Hubert Mingarelli A Meal in Winter (French; trans. Sam Taylor) Portobello Books
Yoko Ogawa Revenge (Japanese; trans. Stephen Snyder) Harvill Secker
Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir Butterflies in November (Icelandic; trans. Brian FitzGibbon) Pushkin Press
Jón Kalman Stefánsson The Sorrow of Angels (Icelandic; trans. Philip Roughton) MacLehose Press
Birgit Vanderbeke The Mussel Feast (German; trans. Jamie Bulloch) Peirene Press