Hello Gentle Reader
“Three Percent Review,” has released their longlist for the Best Translated Book Award in Fiction for twenty thirteen. Previous winners include the Polish writer Wiesław Myśliwski for his novel “Stone Upon Stone,” “The Confessions of Noa Weber,” by the Israeli author Gail Hareven. Previous poetry accolades are the experimental Japanese poet Kiwao Nomura for his collection of poetry (and first time published and translated in English) “Spectacle and Pigsty,” as well as the Slovenian poet Aleš Šteger “The Book of Things.”
This year’s longlist of fiction has some very interesting authors on its longlist. Some of them have already been read, others were previously unknown or passed in a brief moment of browsing.
Familiar names on this list include “Satantango,” by László Krasznahorkai, a novel about a small collective estate’s eventual demise and collapse and the arrival of a messiah or a con man. Written in Krasznahorkai’s signature prose, of long winding sentences, and a sense of apocalyptic dread, all played out with a bleak sense of humour. “The Hunger Angel,” by Herta Müller, the two-thousand and nine, Nobel Laureate in Literature, whose gulag novel, is not the typical documentary novel. Written in Herta Müller signature prose, of an episodic and fragmented poetically detailed language, Müller brings the experience of the shared experience of exile and homeland painfully alive on the page. It’s a testament for both Müller’s mother and the late poet Oskar Pastior, and all the others who history has left unclaimed and forgotten. The deceased author and great Brazilian modernist Clarice Lispector’s posthumous novel “A Breath of Life,” also has made the longlist. That last novel that Clarice Lispector ever wrote, and was not published in her life time. It is a fragmented novel, which takes the shape of a dialogue between author and creation. Karl Ove Knausgaard makes another appearance on a translated prize longlist. Along with “Satantango,” and “Dublinesque,” by Enrique Villa-Matas, his epic novel of confession and personal experience taking on the problems and universal questions of the human experience. So it’s no surprise that “A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1: Vol 1.”
Other books on this longlist that are on the “to read,” list include “Mama Leone,” by Miljenko Jergović and “Maidenhair,” the Russian author Mikhail Shishkin. Frances Michel Houellebecq’s new novel, and also his most distinctly departure from his earlier work.
Others on this list are:
“Prehistoric Times,” by Eric Chevillard
“The Planets,” by Sergio Chejfec
“The Colonel,” by Mahmoud Dowlataba
“Atlas,” by Dung Kai-Cheung
“Kite,” Dominique Eddé
“We, The Children of Cats,” by Tomoyuki Hoshino
“Basti,” by Intizar Husain
“Awakening to the Great Sleep War,” by Gert Jonke
“Autoportrait,” by Edouard Levé
“The Lair,’ by Norman Manea
“Traveler of The Century,” by Andrés Neuman
“Happy Moscow,” by Andrey Platonov
“With the Animals,” by Noëlle Revaz
“Joseph Walser’s Machine,” by Gonçalo M. Tavares
“Island of Second Sight,” by Albert Vigoleis
“Transit,” by Abdourahman A. Waberi
“My Father’s Book,” by Urs Widmer
Good luck to all the authors’ longlisted. There is certainly a wide variety of themes and topics here, with these novels, and it looks to be an exciting shortlist. On a personal note it adds more to the reading list, with excitement raised, and double looks taken.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
