The winner of this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced last night as Aharon Appelfeld, with his Holocaust novel, Blooms of Darkness (Alma Books); translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green.

Appelfeld’s novel, which is based loosely on his own experiences of the Holocaust as a boy, was the overall winner in a shortlist of six titles which included great Italian novelist, Umberto Eco and Yan Lianke’s banned-in-China novel, Dream of Ding Village (Constable and Robinson).

Aharon Appelfeld, who at eighty-years-old becomes the oldest winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, was in London to collect the winner’s cheque of £10,000 which he shares equally with his translator Jeffrey Green. Taking to the podium at the event in the Royal Institute of British Architects, Appelfeld delivered the following statement:

Blooms of Darkness is a work of fiction that includes my personal experience during the Second World War. I wanted to explore the darkest places of human behaviour and to show that even there, generosity and love can survive; that humanity and love can overcome cruelty and brutality. It is a joy to win the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize alongside Jeffrey M Green – he is a highly professional translator and I love his work.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – for which the Booktrust act as custodian – is a UK Prize awarded annually to a work of contemporary fiction in translation by a living author, which has been published during the previous year. The judges for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize were Boyd Tonkin, (Literary Editor of The Independent), Nick Barley (Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival), Xiaolu Guo (novelist, short story writer and filmmaker), Hephzibah Anderson (broadcaster, freelance critic and feature writer) and Jon Cook (Professor of Literature and Director of the Centre for Creative and Performing Arts at the University of East Anglia; Chair of Arts Council England, East).

On their choice of winner Prize judge, Hephzibah Anderson comments:

Jeffrey M Green’s incantatory translation from the Hebrew does ample justice to a novel that meditates on the imagination, memory and language itself. As the relationship between Hugo and Mariana evolves, this deceptively simple narrative does something extraordinary, carrying the reader to a liminal territory in which deep sensuality exists alongside unfathomable brutality.

For further details, including a brief bio on winning author Aharon Appelfeld, please visit the Booktrust website.

From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón; translated by Victoria Cribb
(Telegram Books)

Speaking of this year’s winner, chair of the Shadow IFFP Jury Stuart Allen, had the following to say:

All of us [the judges] felt entranced by the writing and by Sjón’s voice. Through Jonas’ eyes, the writer captured 17th-century Iceland so well, and this was helped by Victoria Cribb’s translation which, through its usage of archaic vocabulary and grammatical forms, gave it the feel of a book that had just been unearthed, not written.

I concur, From the Mouth of the Whale is a delightful novel. It may take some getting into at first, but once one is engaged with it one finds oneself transported to a truly magical world; one that becomes seared in the reader’s memory. A worthy winner indeed, and one for which the translator should be equally applauded.

To recap, the judges for this year’s inaugural ‘Shadow’ Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, were Stuart Allen (Winstonsdad Dad), Lisa Hill (ANZ Litlovers), Simon Quicke (Inside Books), Gary Moon (The Parrish Lantern), Mark Staniforth (Eleutherophobia) and Robert Burdock (RobAroundBooks).

Remember, the official winner is announced tomorrow so if you’re keen to know the result as soon as it becomes available, then be sure to keep a close eye on the #iffp hashtag on Twitter, and on the Booktrust website.

The 2012 Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist has been announced and there is a distinct air of femininity about it. For the the first time in the Prize’s six year history, the shortlist is an all-female affair.

Drawn from a record longlist of 31 titles, it would also seem to be the year of the emerging writer with regards to this year’s Edge Hill Short Story Prize – the only literary award which exclusively celebrates UK short story collections – because all but one of the titles in the 2012 shortlist is a debut collection.

The 2012 Edge Hill Short Story Prize shortlist in full, is as follows (links lead to the publisher pages):

• Somewhere Else, Or Even Here by A.J Ashworth (Salt Publishing)
• Married Love by Tessa Hadley (Jonathan Cape)
• The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
• The War Tour by Zoe Lambert (Comma Press)
• Smoked Meat by Rowena Macdonald (Flambard Press)

Speaking of this year’s shortlist selection, co-ordinator of the Prize and Reader in Creative Writing and English at Edge Hill University, Dr Ailsa Cox said:

It’s quite unusual to have women only on the shortlist but it reflects that the prize is open to anyone, regardless of gender, whether new to the business or well-established in the literary world.

We’re delighted by the sheer quality and diversity of the shortlist. A good short story is intense and exciting, sometimes sad and often very comic. The five collections all have these vital ingredients – so I predict that judging will be difficult this year.

The judging panel which includes 2011 winner Graham Mort, writer and critic Suzi Feay, and former Pro Vice-Chancellor at Edge Hill University, Professor Rhiannon Evans, will now go on to decide on the overall £5000 winner of the Prize, which will be announced at an awards ceremony on 5th July, at the Free Word Centre in London. From this same shortlist a Reader’s Choice prize of £1,000 will also be awarded.

RobAroundBooks extends best wishes and good luck to all shortlisted authors. For further details, including bios of all shortlisted authors, please visit the Edge Hill Short Story Prize website.

• Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) for the story Bombay’s Republic; from Mirabilia Review Vol. 3.9 (Lagos, 2011)
• Billy Kahora (Kenya) for the story Urban Zoning; from McSweeney’s Vol. 37 (San Francisco, 2011)
• Stanley Kenani (Malawi) for the story Love on Trial; from For Honour and Other Stories published by
  eKhaya/Random House Struik (Cape Town, 2011)
• Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) for the story La Salle de Départ from Prick of the Spindle Vol. 4.2 (New Orleans, June, 2010)
• Constance Myburgh (South Africa) for the story Hunter Emmanuel; from Jungle Jim Issue 6, (Cape Town, 2011)

Speaking of this year’s shortlist, Chair of judges, author and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature Bernardine Evaristo MBE had the following to say:

I’m proud to announce that this shortlist shows the range of African fiction beyond the more stereotypical narratives. These stories have an originality and facility with language that made them stand out.

The overall winner of the £10,000 prize will be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford on on Monday 2nd July.

For further details please visit the Caine Prize website or Facebook page. The Caine Prize can also be followed on Twitter.

If you’ve read the stories of Alex Burrett before then you’ll know exactly why I’m so excited to see a new (long overdue) collection from this author. Alex showed with his debut collection (My Goat Ate its Own Legs, which was published by the now sadly defunct Beautiful Books) how original and delightfully entertaining he is in his storytelling, and I expect A Damaged Boy to be no different (simply because the descriptions of some of the 45 stories contained within, promise more of the same).

I first discovered Alex Burrett way back in 2009 when one of his stories featured on Harper Perennial’s Fifty-Two Stories website (you can read my 4.5/5 review of that story HERE). Then, in 2010, Alex’s first collection featured in my ‘Flash Clash’ challenge, when I pitted him against the works of four other short fiction authors (Nik Perring, David Gaffney, Etgar Keret and Dan Rhodes). Although I’m yet to publish the final results from that challenge (talk about long overdue, I know ), I fondly remember just how satisfyingly original Alex’s stories were (just like the one I read on Fifty-Two Stories). I’d say that those who have read and enjoyed the stories of Etgar Keret (or Nik Perring for that matter), will ADORE Alex Burrett.

Now, I know a few of you may turn your nose up at the fact that Alex has decided to self-publish his second short story collection, but please don’t let this put you off. So high is my confidence in this writer that I’ll declare even before I’ve read this new collection myself, that I think it’s going to be an absolute corker. And to be able to download it free for a week is truly a gift from the Gods.

Have I convinced you yet? I certainly hope so. If I have then get yourself over to Smashwords, and download your complimentary copy of A Damaged Boy today. Be quick though, because remember you only have until next Sunday (29th) to download it for free before the price is set at a still very reasonable £2.49 ($3.99/€2.99)).

Oh, and if you happen to like Alex’s new collection then don’t forget to drop him a quick thank you message.

The shortlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was published this morning, revealing a final line up of six titles which span two centuries of history, and a geography that reaches from Iceland through western Europe, all the way to the Far East.

The biggest name on this year’s shortlist is undoubtedly Italian author Umberto Eco, who makes the cut with his anti-Semitism historical novel, The Prague Cemetery. Eco’s novel is deep and involving and highly controversial, but perhaps not as controversial as another title to make the shortlist – Yan Lianke’s banned-in-China, Dream of Ding Village, which offers a harrowing account of the Aids controversy that blighted the Henan Province during the 1990s. Icelandic myth is represented on the shortlist in the form of Sjón’s From the Mouth of the Whale, while the plight of the Jews in the ghettos during WW2 is explored, in Aharon Appelfeld’s Blooms of Darkness. The only woman to make this year’s shortlist is German author Judith Hermann with her novel of interconnected stories, Alice.

The 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist in full, is as follows:

• Alice by Judith Hermann (The Clerkenwell Press); translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
• Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (Alma Books); translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
• Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Constable and Robinson); translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
• From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Telegram Books); translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
• New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Dedalus); translated from the Italian by Judith Landry
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Harvill Secker); translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

Awarded to a living author who has had a translated book published in the UK during the past year, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is administrated by the Booktrust is one of the UK’s most prestigious awards for translated fiction. With five of the six shortlisted titles coming from the smaller presses, this year’s shortlist is a particular triumph for independent publishers.

Speaking about this year’s shortlist, 2012 Prize judge, the freelance critic, feature writer, broadcaster Hephzibah Anderson, said:

The judging process so far has been an epic and exhilarating road trip – a journey crossing centuries and genres as well as continents. But as our shortlist of six titles shows, foreign fiction broadens the mind in a way that foreign travel can never match. Together, these authors and translators will enrich your world, taking you into the hearts and souls of people whose stories would otherwise be unimaginable. At the same time, they reinforce our shared humanity: while life’s flavours, scents and textures are pungently local, its largest – and smallest – moments often prove universal.

The overall winner of the Prize, who along with the translator will receive a shared cheque for £10,000, will be announced at an award ceremony on Monday 14th May, at the Royal Institue of British Architects in central London. For further details please visit the Booktrust website.

If you’ve been following my activities over the past month or so (both here, and on Twitter), then you’ll know that I’ve been busying myself with serving on a ‘shadow jury’ for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The brain child of translated fiction aficionado Stu from the Winstonsdad blog, we, the shadow jury – comprised of Stu, Simon of Inside Books, Gary of The Parrish Lantern, Mark of Eleutherophobia, Lisa of ANZ Litlovers, Tony of Tony’s Reading List, and myself – have been reading between us this year’s official longlist, with a view of selecting our own shortlist and eventual winner.

After much deliberation we’ve come up with our ‘shadow’ shortlist and with the announcement of the official shortlist being made made tomorrow, it’s time to reveal that shortlist, which is as follows:

• From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Telegram Books); translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
• Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas (Jonathan Cape); translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein
• Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz (Chatto & Windus); translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange
• Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga (Harvill Secker); translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
• Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Peirene Press); translated from the German by Anthea Bell
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Harvill Secker); translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

Speaking after selection, shadow judge Rob (that’s me ), had the following to say:

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist this year has once again shown us just how powerful and emotive translated fiction can be. The overall tone of this year’s Prize has been a dark and sombre one, with many of titles taking us back to reflect on the horrors of the past. As such the reading experience has been wholly affecting, and it has proven to be no easy task in reducing the longlist down to a final selection of six.

Encapsulated in our final ‘shadow’ shortlist selection is what we feel to be the ‘cream of the crop’ of this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. These are the six titles which not only fully demonstrate the range and scope of this year’s Prize, but they also stand as a glowing example of what can be achieved when writer and translator form the perfect bond.

If you would like to read the jury’s reviews on the individual titles they read, then I urge you to visit fellow shadow judge Mark’s website, where he has a handy round-up page (if you’re looking for my IFFP-related reviews, I’m a little behind on posting them, so the only one I can point you to at the time of writing is for my review of Amos Oz’s Scenes From Village Life).

The next job for the ‘shadow’ jury is two-fold. We have to decide on our own overall ‘shadow’ winner, while discussing who we think is most deserving of the official Prize. The shortlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, is, as I said, announced tomorrow (Thursday 12th), so make sure you pop on over to RobAroundBooks tomorrow, or more preferably to the Booktrust website, as they’re the official caretakers of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

The nominees for this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award have been announced, revealing a record breaking longlist of 77 short story collections from 17 different countries.

Despite a €10,000 drop in the overall winner’s prize purse this year (down from €35,000 to €25,000), the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award remains one of the world’s richest literary prizes for the short story form. Open to short story collections published for the first time in English anywhere in the world between July 2011 and June 2012 (translations into English also qualify), the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award longlist for 2012 is as follows (links wherever possible, lead directly to the publisher’s product page for each collection. Note also, that the above cover images are also hyperlinked):

• Steve Almond, USA, God Bless America (Lookout Books)
• A. J. Ashworth, UK, Somewhere Else, or Even Here (Salt Publishing)
• Diane Awerbuck, South Africa, Cabin Fever (Umuzi)
• Lou Beach, USA, 420 Characters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Frank Bill, USA, Crimes in Southern Indiana (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Will Boast, USA, Power Ballads (University of Iowa Press)
• Greg Bottoms, USA, Swallowing the Past (Texas Review Press)
• Laura Boudreau, Canada, Suitable Precautions (Biblioasis)
• Shannon Cain, USA, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors (University of Pittsburgh Press)
• Neil Campbell, UK, Pictures from Hopper (Salt Publishing)
• Eileen Casey, Ireland, Snow Shoes (Arlen House)
• O Thiam Chin, Singapore, The Rest of Your Life and Everything That Comes With It (ZI Publications)
• Charles Christian, UK, This is the Quickest Way Down (Proxima)
• Dave Chua, Singapore, The Beating (Ethos Books)
• K. L. Cook, USA, Love Songs for the Quarantined (Willow Springs Editions)
• Mary Costello, Ireland, The China Factory (The Stinging Fly Press)
• Buffy Cram, Canada, Radio Belly (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Eugene Cross, USA, Fires of Our Choosing (Dzanc Books)
• Don DeLillo, USA, The Angel Esmeralda (Picador)
• Stanley Donwood, UK, Household Worms (Tangent Books)
• Catherine Eisner, UK, Listen Close to Me (Salt Publishing)
• Nathan Englander, USA, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Matthew Firth, Canada, Shag Carpet Action (Anvil Press)
• Órfhlaith Foyle, Ireland, Somewhere in Minnesota (Arlen House)
• Matthew Francis, UK, Singing a Man to Death (Cinnamon Press)
• David Galef, USA, My Date With Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Books)
• Dagoberto Gilb, USA, Before the End, After the Beginning (Grove Press)
• Namita Gokhale, India, The Habit of Love (Penguin)
• Lorna Goodison, Jamaica, By Love Possessed (HarperCollins)
• Daniel Griffin, Canada, Stopping for Strangers (Véhicule Press)
• Tessa Hadley, UK, Married Love (Jonathan Cape)
• Sarah Hall, UK, The Beautiful Indifference (Faber & Faber)
• Anjum Hasan, India, Difficult Pleasures (Penguin)
• Tania Hershman, UK, My Mother Was an Upright Piano (Tangent Books)
• Keith Jardim, Trinidad and Tobago, Near Open Water (Peepal Tree Press)
• James Martyn Joyce, Ireland, What’s not Said (Arlen House)
• Suzanne Kamata, USA, The Beautiful One Has Come (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing)
• Jackie Kay, UK, Reality, Reality (Picador)
• Etgar Keret, Israel, Suddenly, a Knock in the Door (Chatto & Windus)
• Fiona Kidman, New Zealand, The Trouble With Fire (Random House)
• Zoe Lambert, UK, The War Tour (Comma Press)
• Krys Lee, USA – South Korea, Drifting House (Faber & Faber)
• Adam Levin, USA, Hot Pink (McSweeney’s)
• Peter Markus, USA, We Make Mud (Dzanc Books)
• Rowena Mcdonald, UK, Smoked Meat (Flambard Press)
• Jon McGregor, UK, This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You (Bloomsbury)
• K. R. Meera, India, Yellow Is the Colour of Longing (Penguin)
• Ana Menendez, USA, Adios, Happy Homeland! (Grove Press)
• Clemens Meyer, Germany, All the Lights (And Other Stories)
• Kevin Moffett, USA, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events (HarperCollins)
• Jim Mullarkey, Ireland, And (Doire Press)
• Sabina Murray, Australia, Tales of the New World (Grove Press)
• Stuart Nadler, USA, The Book of Life (Picador)
• Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Ireland, Mother America (New Island)
• Éllis Ní Dhuibne, Ireland, Shelter of Neighbours (Blackstaff Press)
• Joyce Carol Oates, USA, The Corn Maiden (Grove Press)
• Jamie O’Connell, Ireland, Some Sort of Beauty (Bradshaw Books)
• Rajesh Parameswaran, USA, I Am an Executioner (Bloomsbury)
• Cassandra Parkin, UK, New World Fairy Tales (Salt Publishing)
• Lucia Perillo, USA, Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain (W. W. Norton & Company)
• Dave Pescod, UK, All Embracing (Route)
• Alice Petersen, Canada, All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis)
• Stephanie Powell Watts, USA, We Are Taking Only What We Need (BkMk Press)
• Wayne Price, UK, Furnace (Freight Books)
• Stephanie Reents, USA, The Kissing List (Hogarth)
• Rebecca Rosenblum, Canada, The Big Dream (Biblioasis)
• Pamela Ryder, USA, A Tendency to Be Gone (Dzanc Books)
• Nathalie Serber, USA, Shout Her Lovely Name (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Johanna Skibsrud, Canada, This Will Be Difficult to Explain (W. W. Norton & Co./Hamish Hamilton)
• Yasuko Thanh, Canada, Floating Like the Dead (McClelland & Stewart)
• Lysley Tenorio, USA – Philippines, Monstress (HarperCollins)
• Laura Maylene Walter, USA, Living Arrangements (BkMk Press)
• Diane Williams, USA, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (McSweeney’s)
• D. W. Wilson, Canada, Once You Break a Knuckle (Bloomsbury/Hamish Hamilton)
• Lucy Wood, UK, Diving Belles (Bloomsbury)
• Barbara Unkovic, Croatia, Moon Walking (Old Line Publishing)
• Dina Zaman, Malaysia, King of the Sea (Silverfish Books)

The shortlist for this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, which will be decided on by a jury of three (poet James Harpur, novelist and short story writer Mary Leland, and literary programmer and short story promoter Ann Luttrel), will be announced in June, with the overall winner being announced in July. The winner will also be required to attend the Cork International Short Story Festival in September, where he/she will receive their cheque.

I said yesterday that if the judging panel were in jovial mood, then Kevin Barry would take this year’s Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award Well, it was announced earlier this evening at the Oxford Literary Festival that he did indeed take the top prize, and the £30,000 winner’s cheque.

The folks here at RobAroundBooks i.e. me – a staff of one, couldn’t be happier. Beer Trip to Llandudno is a wonderfully entertaining and warming story, and Barry wholeheartedly deserves to win.

Tweeting live from the event, @ShortStoryAward told us that Barry’s acceptance speech was ‘funny, charming and humble’, which is exactly what I, and anyone who’s ever met the man, would expect his speech to be.

Speaking of Barry’s winning story, Prize judge Hanif Kureishi had the following to say:

It’s a beautifully constructed piece of writing that says something fresh about how men find comfort, support and humour in each other’s company. This is an astonishing story that is both daringly original and full of heart.

Thanks to the power of Twitter, news of Barry’s victory quickly reached family in Ireland. His charming niece Siobhán told me that there was ‘a lot of jumping up and down going on’ at her home in Limerick. I foresee many a party happening in Ireland over the next few days .

Of course, with every silver lining there’s a cloud, and my heart really goes out to the five other shortlisted authors who walked away from this year’s #STEFG12 empty-handed (well not exactly empty-handed, they each receive a cheque for £1,000 along with the thrill of being on the shortlist, while having their stories published in the anthology). If you read my reviews of each shortlisted short story, then you’ll know just how highly I regard every one of them, so it pains me to see any of these authors ‘lose’.

My congratulations to Kevin Barry then, and my commiserations to the five runners-up. I thank you all again (and by all I include the Sunday Times, EFG Private Bank and Booktrust) for giving me, and many other short story fans, a month to remember.

The longlist for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced early today, revealing another diverse selection of globe-spanning titles which have been translated into the English language.

Topping this year’s selection is Haruki Murakami’s blockbuster 1Q84 (Books 1 & 2), and Yan Lianke’s powerful banned-in-China novel, Dream of Ding Village, which fictionalises the AIDS scandal which has affected the Henen Province in recent years. Steve Sem-Sandberg’s epic Holocaust novel The Emperor of Lies also makes the longlist, along with Sjón’s mythical Iclandic epic, From the Mouth of the Whale.

2012 also spells good news for the smaller independent publishers, whose titles make up almost half of the titles selected for this year’s longlist.

Open to foreign language titles published in English translation in the UK during the previous year, the fifteen titles in this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist – which this year covers thirteen languages in translation – is as follows (all links lead directly to publisher’s website):

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker); translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
• Alice by Judith Hermann (The Clerkenwell Press); translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
• Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (Alma Books); translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
• Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Constable and Robinson); translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
• From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Telegram Books); translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
• Hate: A Romance by Tristan Garcia (Faber & Faber); translated from the French by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein
• New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Dedalus); translated from the Italian by Judith Landry
• Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Peirene Press); translated from the German by Anthea Bell
• Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas (Jonathan Cape); translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein
• Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim
• Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad (Harvill Secker); translated from the Norwegian by Agnes Scott Langeland
• Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz (Chatto & Windus); translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange
• Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga (Harvill Secker); translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
• The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg (Faber & Faber); translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Harvill Secker); translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

Funded by Arts Council England, and administrated by the Booktrust, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is the only UK prize dedicated to translated fiction. It is also the only prize where the translator is given the same level of recognition as the author, with the winning cheque for £10,000 being shared equally between both.

Speaking of this year’s longlist, first time judge and Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Nick Barley, had the following to say:

From 98 entries we have selected a longlist of 15 novels that reflect the fast-growing appetite for high quality fiction from around the world. From Judith Hermann’s succinct book of linked stories to the 1100-page tome by Peter Nadas, this year’s list couldn’t be more diverse – both in sheer scale and in subject matter. And while it has been a strong year for the established literary imprints, I was delighted that several titles from smaller independent publishers also shone out. Among these 15 titles there’s a treasure trove of unforgettable treats for readers.

The longlist will now be reduced to a shortlist of six, which will be announced on Thursday 12 April. The overall winner of the Prize will be revealed at an awards ceremony in central London on Monday 14 May, at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

For further information – including details of the all judges involved in this year’s Prize – please visit the Booktrust website. You can also follow related chatter on Twitter, using the #IFFP hashtag.

***

Rob’s Reaction: Well, what a thrilling longlist this year, and one which covers a staggering 13 languages in translation. My coverage of translated literature on RobAroundBooks has been severely lacking of late, and it’ll come as no surprise – especially to those who regularly visit – that I have not posted reviews of any of these titles. However, that’s not to say that I’m not familiar with most of them.

For me there are no real surprises coming from this year’s longlist announcement. I wholly expected to see Murakami there, along with Sjón and Steve Sem-Sandberg (his novel is too important to be ignored). I’m also thrilled to see that Peter Nadas making the longlist with his monster 1,100+ page tome. It’s also great to see Peirene Press represented in the longlist again this year. They deserve yearly recognition for their dedication to translated fiction in the UK, and the quality of their published literature. I only hope that they can get further than they did last year.

The big surprises for me come not from what’s on this year’s longlist, but rather from what isn’t. Former IFFP winner Per Petterson (2006 for his novel, Out Stealing Horses), who made the shortlist last year with I Curse The River of Time, didn’t make it this year. And more surprising is the fact that Maclehose Press who ALWAYS have a strong showing in the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, have not a single title represented in 2012. This saddens me, especially given the strength and quality of translated titles that have come from Maclehose Press in the past year. I’m also disappointed that ‘new-kid-on-the-block’, And Other Stories hasn’t shown on the longlist, with Juan Pablo Villalobos’ brillant novel, Down The Rabbit Hole (assuming of course that it was put forward for consideration in the first place).

Regardless of what is or isn’t on the IFFP longlist this year, it’s still a strong and exciting selection, and I’m thrilled with the judges choices (I’m also particularly thrilled with the inclusion of one of the judges this year – Nick Barley) . I opened this reaction piece by saying that through inaction I haven’t read any of this year’s longlisted titles, but I’m aiming to make amends by covering as many as I can before the shortlist is announced in just over a month (a mean feat given that at least three of the longlisted titles are tome-like). I have an announcement to make about this in another post, so until then let’s just bask in the glory of the 2012 IFFP longlist. Good luck to all longlisted authors, translators and publishers.