Best Translated Book Award longlist

       The twenty-five title strong longlist for the Best Translated Book Award has now been announced.
       The longlisted titles are:

• Atlas by Dung Kai-Cheung
• Autoportrait by Edouard Levé
• Awakening to the Great Sleep of War by Gert Jonke
• Basti by Intizar Husain
• A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector
• The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
• Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas
• Happy Moscow by Andrey Platonov
• The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller
• Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen
• Joseph Walser's Machine by Gonçalo M. Tavares
• Kite by Dominique Eddé
• The Lair by Norman Manea
• Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin
• Mama Leone by Miljenko Jergovic
• The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq
• Satantango by Krasznahorkai László
• My Father's Book by Urs Windmer
• My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard
• The Planets by Sergio Chejfec
• Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard
• Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi
• Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman
• We, The Children of Cats by Hoshino Tomoyuki
• With the Animals by Noëlle Revaz

       One note: before you start complaining about what was outrageously overlooked, check that the book in question was actually eligible -- the 2012 Translation Database at Three Percent is slightly out of date, but pretty much corresponds to the titles that could be considered.
       Observations: as Chad Post tallied: nineteen different countries and thirteen different languages are represented -- but only four women (authors). While the (sixteen-title-strong) Independent Foreign Fiction Prize includes no translation from the German, the BTBA has four titles; the IFFP has two translations from the French, the BTBA six. On the whole, the geographic spread (for what that's worth ...) is pretty impressive -- though there's only one title from Africa. The obvious major gaping hole is that there are no titles translated from the Arabic (but there is one translated from the Persian, and one from the Urdu).
       Notable authors missing from the BTBA list include a whole slew of Nobel laureates: Mario Vargas Llosa, Orhan Pamuk, Mo Yan, and José Saramago all had eligible titles, but Herta Müller is the only one to make the list.
       Other notable titles missing are Laurent Binet's HHhH, Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women, either of the two eligible César Aira titles, Claudio Magris' Blindly, Per Petterson's It's Fine by Me, and Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.
       I was a judge for the BTBA -- but to give you an idea of the limited influence each individual has: we each named our top ten, and the top vote-getters made for sixteen longlisted titles, with each of us then naming one additional title for the final spots -- and only six of my top ten were among the top sixteen vote-getters; the one additional spot I could fill still meant that only seven of my top ten made the list .....
       Among other titles that didn't make the longlist which I would have liked to see (but which I didn't necessarily vote for in my top ten) are also:

• Death Sentences by Kawamata Chiaki
• The Last of the Vostyachs by Diego Marani -- maybe the biggest oversight on the list (but fortunately IFFP-longlisted)
• The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko
• Mathematics: by Jacques Roubaud
• The Neighborhood by Gonçalo M. Tavares -- very different from the Tavares that did make the longlist, but a lot of fun
• The Thief by Nakamura Fuminori -- seemed the likeliest (and most deserving) crime/thriller candidate this year ....
• Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta by Aglaja Veteranyi -- it recently won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from the German

       Meanwhile, it's also amusing to compare the actual list to my predictions from last year -- which weren't half-bad.
       Since I'm still judging I won't tip my hand regarding favorites (though my reviews, where available, certainly give you some sense of what I'll be supporting and what I probably won't ...).
       The shortlist will be announced 10 April, and the winner on 4 May.