In Literary News

Hello Gentle Reader

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Winner –

Jenny Erpenbeck has won this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for her novel “The End of Days.” Erpenbeck is the first living German writer, to win the award – though other German language writers like Sebald, and Gert Hofmann, had won the award posthumously. Erpenbeck’s novel is a bleak meditation on the numerous possibilities, of the fate of the protagonist, who is born into the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century; and each of the possibilities is filled with the consequences of history, that overshadows the twentieth century. Despite the bleak subject matter, and the at times hopeless despair that is bled into its pages, the judges, retain that the novel is a compelling read, and offers continual re-readings, to see the consequential choices, that affect one individuals life, ripping throughout the eternity of time.

The Best Translated Book Award Winners For Fiction & Poetry –

This year’s Best Translated Book Award for Fiction goes to the Chinese writer, and true Chinese Kafka Can Xue, for her novel “The Last Lover.” The novel was cited as being uncompromising, yet rewarding, as it pushes the novel form into new territory; and is as bewildering strange, and horrifying, in its dreamscape like world reminiscent of Kafka’s “Amerika.” As the “Three Percent Review,” writes: if the proposed idea of what is an Eastern or Oriental society exists only in the imaginations of Westerns, then Can Xue’s novel, is the shadow side of an Oriental dreamed Western society.

This year’s Best Translated Book Award for Poetry goes to the Mexican poet Rocío Cerón, for her collection “Diorama.”

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature 2016 Finalists –

The Neustadt International Prize for Literature has been awarded to numerous writers, of international prestige; from the previous winner Mia Couto, to Francois Pogne, and Nobel Laureates, Tomas Transtromer and Czesław Miłosz. The Finalists for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, are as follows.

Can Xue – China
Caryl Churchill – England
Aminatta Forna – Scotland and Sierra Leone
Guadalupe Nettel – Mexico
Dubravka Ugresic, Croatia and The Netherlands
Ghassan Zaqtan – Palestine
Don Paterson – Scotland
Ann-Marie MacDonald – Canada
Carolyn Forché - United States

More information of the authors and biographies can be found on the following link:

http://neustadtprize.org/finalists-announced-for-the-24th-neustadt-international-prize-for-literature/#.VWdkS9JViko


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