More on the IMPAC longlist

       So they announced the longlist for the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award yesterday: 154 books, including 43 by American authors and 42 translated out of 19 different languages (but none from the Chinese ? none from the Arabic ? none from the Russian ? only one from Japanese ? seriously ? out of 154 books ?).
       See the full list here -- unfortunately not presented as a simple list, but rather with cover-pictures, etc. (I'd be more impressed if they didn't misspell some of the author name -- 'Delphime de Vigan' ? 'Horatio Castellanos Moya' ? again: seriously ? the names are printed on the god damn covers, guys .....)
       As usual, it's a very, very mixed bag; as usual, too, far too many of the nominating libraries prove to be outrageously nationalistic (surely the most obvious step this prize should have taken long ago: no nominations of home-country authors permitted).
       Quite a few of these titles are under review at the complete review:

• 1Q84 by Murakami Haruki
• The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am by Kjersti A. Skomsvold
• Funeral for a Dog by Thomas Pletzinger
• The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
• The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
• The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen
• Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique by Gonçalo M. Tavares
• Lightning by Jean Echenoz
• The Map and the Territory by Michel Houllebecq
• The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• Please Look After Mom by Shin Kyung-Sook
• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
• Temporary Perfections by Gianrico Carofiglio
• The Truth about Marie by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
• Tyrant Memory by Horacio Castellanos Moya
• Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes

       And there are review-overviews of:

• Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco
• Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan

       We'll have to wait until April for the shortlist (a lot of books for the judges to get through ...), but there are enough decent ones to choose from.