Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist announced
9th March 2012
The longlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has been announced, with 15 titles in contention for the GBP 10,000 award.
Inaugurated in 1990, it is the only major British literary award devoted to fiction in translation, with the prize money split equally between the author and the translator.
This year's longlist is a diverse array of works, including Haruki Murakami's acclaimed 1Q84: Books 1 and 2, set in a hallucinatory alternative Tokyo, and Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery, which explores the idea of one man being behind multiple global atrocities.
They are up against Judith Hermann's Alice, a series of interconnecting narratives exploring the notion of loss, set in Germany and Italy, as well as Amos Oz's Scenes from Village Life, a surreal account of life in an Israeli settlement.
Nick Barley, prize judge and director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, said that the longlist could not be any more diverse, either in terms of subject matter or sheer scale.
'While it has been a strong year for the established literary imprints, I was delighted that several titles from smaller independent publishers also shone out. Among these 15 titles there's a treasure trove of unforgettable treats for readers,' he added.
A shortlist of six titles will be unveiled on April 12th, with the winner of the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize announced on May 14th.
The full longlist can be viewed by following this link.