Best Translated Book Award longlist

       The longlist for the Best Translated Book Award has now been announced, and the titles are:

• The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa; tr. Jeffrey Gray
  
  
• Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky; tr. Joanne Turnbull
  
  
• Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu; tr. Sean Cotter
  
  
• City of Angels Or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud by Christa Wolf; tr. Damion Searls
  
  
• Commentary by Marcelle Sauvageot; tr. Christine Schwartz Hartley and Anna Moschovakis
  
  
• The Devil's Workshop by Jáchym Topol; tr. Alex Zucker
  
  
• The End of Love by Marcos Giralt Torrente; tr. Katherine Silver
  
  
• The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff; tr. Paul Vincent
  
  
• Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek; tr. Damion Searls
  
  
• Horses of God by Mahi Binebine; tr. Lulu Norman
  
  
• In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina; tr. Edith Grossman
  
  
• The Infatuations by Javier Marías; tr. Margaret Jull Costa
  
  
• Leg Over Leg, Vol. 1 by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq; tr. Humphrey Davies
  
  
• The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal; tr. Nick Caistor
  
  
• My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard; tr. Don Bartlett
  
  
• Red Grass by Boris Vian; tr. Paul Knobloch
  
  
• Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan; tr. Howard Goldblatt
  
  
• Seiobo There Below by Krasznahorkai László; tr. Ottilie Mulzet
  
  
• Sleet by Stig Dagerman; tr. Steven Hartman
  
  
• The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante; tr. Ann Goldstein
  
  
• Textile by Orly Castel-Bloom; tr. Dalya Bilu
  
  
• Through the Night by Stig Sæterbakken; tr. Seán Kinsella
  
  
• Tirza by Arnon Grunberg; tr. Sam Garrett
  
  
• A True Novel by Mizumura Minae; tr. Juliet Winters Carpenter
  
  
• The Whispering Muse by Sjón; tr. Victoria Cribb

       Chad Post had a preview-post with some of the statistics on Sunday, noting that:

• the books are published by twenty-three different publishers, an absolutely amazing spread
  
  
• books originally written in sixteen different languages are represented

       More statistics and observations:

• the two Nobel laureates with eligible titles -- Mo Yan and Elfirede Jelinek -- both made the cut
  
  
• two authors with the first name: 'Stig' made the cut
  
  
• two translations by Damion Searls made the cut
  
  
• only two books that made the recently-announced Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist also made the BTBA cut: The Infatuations and A Man in Love/My Struggle: Book Two (because of different eligibility criteria (most notably US/UK publication -- but also, for example, the IFFP requires authors to be living (and seven of the BTBA nominees are deceased ...) only a limited number of titles are eligible for both prizes)

       Among the surprise omissions from the BTBA longlist the most notable is surely last year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner, Gerbrand Bakker's The Detour/Ten White Geese. Presumably also a surprise: 2012-BTBA-winner Wiesław Myśliwski's new novel, A Treatise on Shelling Beans (an Archipelago title -- one of only two publishers to place two titles on this year's longlist) also fell short. Other books you might have expected include: Amos Oz's Between Friends, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself, at least one of Dalkey Archive Press' Korean titles (No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin, for example), and Ogawa Yoko's Revenge.

       If I had to identify the biggest oversight, I'd say -- no question: Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès, a book that just can't seem to get the respect, attention, and readers it deserves.

       I am one of the judges for the BTBA; I have already at least dipped into every one of these books save Textile (which I did not get a copy of in time; I do have one now). In selecting the longlist, each of the judges votes for their top ten, the top vote-getters are the sixteen title-foundation of the longlist, and then each judge gets to throw in another title of their own choosing. Just like last year, only six of my top ten made the top-sixteen; with my additional personal choice seven of my top ten are on the longlist.