They've announced the longlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Four of the titles are under review at the complete review:
(The IFFP and BTBA differ slightly in their criteria: aside from domestic publication (UK for the IFFP and US for the BTBA), IFFP eligible authors (but not necessarily translators) have to be living (BTBA authors don't), and BTBA titles have to be first-time translations, i.e. not new translations of previously translated works (IFFP titles apparently don't -- though it's rare (though not unheard of) for work by living authors to be re-translated)).
Alas, we don't know what books were considered for the IFFP, though apparently the selection was made from 111 entries, translated from 28 languages; Booktrust has a tantalizing picture of the books, but, disappointingly and inexplicably, refuses to release the list of titles. (The BTBA is entirely transparent: anything meeting the criteria -- pretty much anything listed on the Three Percent 2014 Translation Database (except the anthologies -- we don't consider anthologies, but they're on the database) -- is considered, and this year we've managed very, very well at considering practically all the (ca. 500) titles.)
With only seven possibly overlapping titles this year it'll be interesting to see how many also make the BTBA longlist. And regardless of overlap, you'll see a lot of new/other titles on the BTBA list -- at least eighteen.
Judge Boyd Tonkin writes about the IFFP longlist at The Independent, suggesting: 'The prize can often signpost change in the literary balance of power' in Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: Some tales are truly found in translation -- noting that fully a third of the list, five titles, is translated from the German; quite a striking showing.
Four of the titles are under review at the complete review:
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Murakami Haruki, translated by Philip Gabriel
- F by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Carol Brown Janeway
- The Giraffe's Neck by Judith Schalansky, translated by Shaun Whiteside
- In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González, translated by Frank Wynne
(The IFFP and BTBA differ slightly in their criteria: aside from domestic publication (UK for the IFFP and US for the BTBA), IFFP eligible authors (but not necessarily translators) have to be living (BTBA authors don't), and BTBA titles have to be first-time translations, i.e. not new translations of previously translated works (IFFP titles apparently don't -- though it's rare (though not unheard of) for work by living authors to be re-translated)).
Alas, we don't know what books were considered for the IFFP, though apparently the selection was made from 111 entries, translated from 28 languages; Booktrust has a tantalizing picture of the books, but, disappointingly and inexplicably, refuses to release the list of titles. (The BTBA is entirely transparent: anything meeting the criteria -- pretty much anything listed on the Three Percent 2014 Translation Database (except the anthologies -- we don't consider anthologies, but they're on the database) -- is considered, and this year we've managed very, very well at considering practically all the (ca. 500) titles.)
With only seven possibly overlapping titles this year it'll be interesting to see how many also make the BTBA longlist. And regardless of overlap, you'll see a lot of new/other titles on the BTBA list -- at least eighteen.
Judge Boyd Tonkin writes about the IFFP longlist at The Independent, suggesting: 'The prize can often signpost change in the literary balance of power' in Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: Some tales are truly found in translation -- noting that fully a third of the list, five titles, is translated from the German; quite a striking showing.