Foreign Fiction Prize Nominees Include Vila-Matas, Pauls, and Restrepo

By Guadalupe Diego -- Críticas, 2/5/2008

Three Spanish-language authors are among the 17 nominees vying for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; they are Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas, Argentine Alan Pauls, and Colombian Laura Restrepo. The prize, worth £10,000 and divided between author and translator, is given by the Independent, a daily paper, and the Arts Council England.

Vila-Matas was selected for the translation of his novel El mal de Montano (Montano), Alan Pauls for El Pasado (The Past), and Restrepo for Delirio (Delirium). The “long list,” which includes works in Chinese, Arabic, and Hebrew, among other languages, will be narrowed down to six finalists at the end of February. The winner will be announced May 8.

Last year, the Foreign Fiction Prize went to Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa for his novel The Book of Chameleons, which won over Spaniard runner-up Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow, 2: Dance and Dream. The only Spanish-language author to date to receive this award, Spaniard Javier Cercas was praised in 2004 for his Soldados de Salamina (Soldiers of Salamina).The Portuguese author José Saramago received the prize in 1993 for his novel El año de la muerte de Ricardo Reis (The Year of Ricardo Reis’s Death).

The prize, which is awarded to the best work of fiction by a living author translated into English and published in the U.K., was launched in 1990, discontinued in 1996 for five years, and reactivated in 2001 with the support of the Arts Council England.

All the nominees are:

Alaa Al-Aswany, The Yacoubian Building (translated by Humphrey Davies from the Arabic, and published by Fourth Estate)

Bi Feiyu, The Moon Opera (Howard Goldblatt; Chinese; Telegram)

Lars Saabye Christensen, The Model (Don Bartlett; Norwegian; Arcadia)

Jenny Erpenbeck, The Book of Words (Susan Bernofsky; German; Portobello)

Pawel Huelle, Castorp (Antonia Lloyd-Jones; Polish; Serpent's Tail)

Ismail Kadare, Agamemnon's Daughter (David Bellos; French; Canongate)

Sayed Kashua, Let It Be Morning (Miriam Shlesinger; Hebrew; Atlantic)

Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World (Carol Brown Janeway; German; Quercus)

Erwin Mortier, Shutterspeed (Ina Rilke; Dutch; Harvill Secker)

Marlene van Niekerk, The Way of the Women (Michiel Heyns; Afrikaans; Little, Brown)

Bengt Ohlsson, Gregorius (Silvester Mazzarella; Swedish; Portobello)