It called for soul-searching and sacrifice but, after much impassioned
debate, the shortlist for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize took the
shape that you see here. If anything, the panel of judges – Xiaolu Guo, Jon
Cook, Nick Barley, Hephzibah Anderson and myself – had to contend with an
embarrassment of riches. Whatever our perennial regrets about the limited
quantity of fiction brought into English from other languages, the quality of
translations felt as bold and bright as ever. In Britain, we owe so much of our
view of global fiction to independent publishers of various shapes and sizes.
Responsible for around two-thirds of all submissions for the Independent prize,
they contribute five out of the six titles on this list – although I ought to
stress that neither commercial nor geographical provenance ever sways the
decision.
That said, this selection loops in a vast arc from the wind-blown cliffs of
17th-century Iceland (Sjón) to the cafés of fin-de-siècle Paris (Umberto Eco)
and the dusty villages of Henan (Yan Lianke). The books embrace as wide a span
of forms as of locations – from the enlaced story-cycle of Judith Hermann's
bohemian Berlin to the eerie, enigmatic fable Diego Marani spins in wartime
Trieste and the starkly realistic yet fairy-tale landscape where Aharon
Appelfeld's young hero survives. It was a privilege to read, and to discuss, all
these books.
Full story at The Independent
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