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BTBA 2017 Fiction Longlist Clues [Day One]

Next Tuesday, March 28th, over at The Millions, this year’s Best Translated Book Award longlists will finally be unveiled. So let the countdown begin!

This really is a great time of year for international fiction—the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Man Booker International Longlist was released last week, as was the news that Jill Schoolman, founder and publisher of Archipelago Books, will receive this year’s Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.

And in that vein of promoting international literature, there’s the BTBA, which is what I’ll be focusing on for the rest of the week.

As with years past, I have the fiction longlist already (and will have the poetry one soon) and want to tease everyone by dropping some clues over the course of the week. We’ll start out pretty general, and by next Monday, I may even reveal some notable books that didn’t make the cut.

These clues and hints are all supposed to be fun—and maybe a bit cheeky—but as in the past, I’m willing to offer up an award for the first person who can correctly guess all twenty-five longlisted titles: a lifetime subscription to Open Letter books. My only condition is that you can only answer once, and in return, I’ll email you back letting you know how many titles you got correct. Just send your guesses to chad.post@rochester.edu or to @chadwpost on Twitter.

For this first set of clues, I’m just going to go with some of the easily quantifiable things, which are incredibly useful in trying to get all of your favorite books to fit onto this list . . . So, without further ado, here are a few details from the 2017 BTBA Fiction Longlist:

  • Thirteen different languages are represented on the longlist, and nineteen different countries;
  • Eighteen different publishers have at least one book included on the list, and one publisher has four titles;
  • One translator is responsible for four books on the list;
  • Eight female authors have books on the list;
  • Only one book from the Man Booker International Longlist is also on the BTBA fiction longlist.

That should get you started . . . Tomorrow I’ll try and look at how many repeat authors and presses are on here, which should be interesting.

In the meantime, it might be worthwhile checking out the posts from BTBA judges about the books they read and loved.



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