Never let it ever be said that the world of social media is not one where friendships are made and connections formed that add happiness and interest. One of those book loving friends I have made Stuart Allen (otherwise known as Winstonsdad) has asked me to be part of the jury for the Shadow IFFP Prize.
The idea is that we shadow the judging process of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and have a bit of fun doing it. I have read one of the long list, Next World Novella, but am yet to post a review (will do that soon) and am aiming to get my hands on another couple. What unites the people who are doing this is a love of translated literature and so the chance to read some good books is not an opportunity to be missed.
The other judges apart from Stu and me are:
Mark of Eleutherophobia blog
Gary of Parrish Lantern
Rob of robaroundbooks
Kinna of kinna reads
Lisa of ANZ lit lovers
Tony of Tony's Reading List
The longlist is:
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker); translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
Alice by Judith Hermann (The Clerkenwell Press); translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld (Alma Books); translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green
Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke (Constable and Robinson); translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter
From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón (Telegram Books); translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb
Hate: A Romance by Tristan Garcia (Faber & Faber); translated from the French by Marion Duvert and Lorin Stein
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Dedalus); translated from the Italian by Judith Landry
Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki (Peirene Press); translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Parallel Stories by Peter Nadas (Jonathan Cape); translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein
Please Look After Mother by Kyung-sook Shin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad (Harvill Secker); translated from the Norwegian by Agnes Scott Langeland
Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz (Chatto & Windus); translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange
Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga (Harvill Secker); translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa
The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg (Faber & Faber); translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death
The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (Harvill Secker); translated from the Italian by Richard Dixo