Commentary and analysis will go in another post . . . for now, here’s the official press release.

January 27, 2011—The 25-title fiction longlist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards was announced this morning at Three Percent—a resource for international literature at the University of Rochester. According to award co-founder Chad W. Post, this year’s longlist is a “testament to the number of high-quality works in translation that are making their way to American readers, thanks to a number of talented translators and exciting publishing houses.”

Featuring authors from 19 countries writing in 12 languages, the list highlights established authors, like Javier Marías and David Grossman, alongside newcomers, such as Julia Franck and Abdelfattah Kilito. It also features titles from the past three centuries, from Eline Vere (originally published in Dutch in 1893) to I Curse the River of Time (first published in Norwegian in 2008), and there’s a wide range of length, with Cyclops checking in at 550 pages, and Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico at a much briefer 57 pages.

“Not only is this a collection of the year’s most important and compelling books in translation, it’s a list of high quality books that deserve readers’ attention,” said fiction judge Monica Carter. “These books represent a global perspective that, due to the dedication and talent of the translators, can open up the world to readers of English. The Best Translated Book Awards serve the world literature community of writers, translators, and readers in a way that no other award can.”

Founded in 2007 with the goal of bringing additional attention to international works of literature, the Best Translated Book Awards are one of the only awards in the country honoring original works in translation. Selection criteria include the quality of the work itself, along with the quality of the translation. All original translations (not retranslations or reprints) published between December 1, 2009, and November 30, 2010, were eligible.

This year’s set of judges consists of Monica Carter (Salonica), Scott Esposito (Conversational Reading and Center for the Art of Translation), Susan Harris (Words Without Borders), Annie Janusch (Translation Review), Matthew Jakubowski (writer & critic), Brandon Kennedy (bookseller/cataloger), Bill Marx (PRI’s The World: World Books), Michael Orthofer (Complete Review), and Jeff Waxman (Seminary Co-op and The Front Table).

The award itself has grown greatly over the past few years. Beginning as an online-only event, the Best Translated Book Awards now feature an awards ceremony and a $5,000 cash prize—awarded to each winning author and translator, thanks to the support of Amazon.com.

The 10-title fiction shortlist will be announced on Thursday, March 24th, concurrent with the announcement of the finalists for the poetry award. Winners will be announced on April 29th in New York City, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival.

More details about the awards ceremony will be made available in coming weeks. In the meantime, Three Percent will highlight a book a day from the fiction longlist, with pieces written by translators, reviewers, and editors about the individual qualities of each title, and “why it should win.”

The 2011 BTBA Fiction Longlist (in alphabetical order by author):

The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)

The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive)

The Rest Is Jungle & Other Stories by Mario Benedetti, translated from the Spanish by Harry Morales (Host Publications)

A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer)

A Jew Must Die by Jacques Chessex, translated from the French by Donald Wilson (Bitter Lemon)

A Splendid Conspiracy by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (New Directions)

The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis (New York Review Books)

Eline Vere by Louis Couperus, translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke (Archipelago)

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)

The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Franck, translated from the German by Anthea Bell (Grove)

Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar), translated from the French by David Bellos (Yale University Press)

To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen (Knopf)

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books)

The Clash of Images by Abdelfattah Kilito, translated from the French by Robyn Creswell (New Directions)

Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (New Directions)

Cyclops by Ranko Marinković, translated from the Croatian by Vlada Stojiljković, edited by Ellen Elias-Bursać (Yale University Press)

Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions)

I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund and the author (Graywolf Press)

A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch, translated from the Polish by David Frick (Open Letter)

Touch by Adania Shibli, translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar (Clockroot)

The Black Minutes by Martín Solares, translated from the Spanish by Aura Estrada and John Pluecker (Grove/Black Cat)

On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)

Microscripts by Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions/Christine Burgin)

Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Archipelago)

As we announced last week, both here and at the American Literary Translators Association annual conference, Amazon.com is underwriting the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards to the tune of $25,000, allowing each winning translator and author receive a $5,000 cash prize. (And the leftover $5K will allow all of our 14 judges to attend the awards ceremony.)

Having started this award one morning when I was drunk on coffee and ambition, I was really proud and excited to be able to announce this. All I ever wanted to accomplish with this prize was to bring more recognition to excellent works of literature translated by excellent translators. And yes, I’ll take full credit and responsibility for getting and accepting the $25K from Amazon. Obviously I talked to all of our panelist about this before nailing everything down, but I brought the idea to Amazon, and in the end, it was my decision to do this.

Over the past few years I’ve dreamt of how to make the awards more well known, more respected, more institutionalized, and in my opinion, this prize money will do just that. More people will talk about the winners, heaping praise on the winning artists and hopefully helping get the titles into the hands of more readers. And I still think this was the ultimate best decision, even after obsessing over reading Dennis Loy Johnson’s diatribe about how Melville House will no longer participate in the BTBAs.

I don’t want to engage with Dennis’s core issue (Amazon is evil, therefore money given by Amazon is laced with evil¹), since that will get us nowhere fast and detracts from the main point: that winning translators and authors will each receive $5,000 cash this year. Now, I don’t know all the specifics of Melville House translator contracts, but I’m willing to make a guess that $5,000 is equal to, or more than, the average translator gets paid for doing a book for Melville House. (I know it is for Open Letter at least.)

There are a couple things I do want to say in response to Dennis’s post and comments. First off, it’s actually not possible for Melville House to “withdraw from any future involvement” with the prize. We run the BTBAs like the National Book Critics Circle awards—publishers are encouraged to send eligible titles to the panelists, but panelists are also out buying, reading, and evaluating books on their own. We do this for the same reason that we don’t charge a submission fee—so that small presses that may not have the resources and infrastructure of a Random House can still be considered for the prize.

For example, last year at almost the eleventh hour for the voting, Michael Orthofer told all of us about The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas. None of us had heard of this because Ariadne Press wasn’t aware of the award, or didn’t bother sending us copies, or whatever. But the book was one of the best eligible translations published in 2009, and we wanted everyone to know about it.

Point being, unless Melville House stops publishing literature in translation (which I don’t think is going to happen anytime soon), their titles will still be considered for the award. We won’t expect any review copies to be arriving on the doorsteps of our panelists anytime soon (although seeing that the majority are also reviewers, we might end up receiving more books than we expect), and if a Melville House title is chosen, we will offer the money to the winning author and translator. It’s up to them if they want to reject it or not. We’ll still promote the book, try and get people to read it, etc., etc.

And yes, as in years past, we will try and promote the crap out of these titles through independent bookstores. I worked for years in indie stores before getting into publishing and will always have a soft spot in my heart for what they do. I love the people in bookselling, the feeling of being in a bookstore, of browsing, of overhearing bookish conversations, of getting a recommendation from someone who’s more well-read than I am. Simply put, indie bookstores kick ass. And as was demonstrated with the now on hiatus Reading the World program, and the number of judges on our panels, indie stores are great supporters of international literature, and we (me, Open Letter, Three Percent, the BTBAs, society) would be lost without them.

Since oversharing is a hallmark of this blog, I do want to say that reading about Dennis’s post on dozens and dozens of blogs and tweets and whatever rocked my mind a little bit. As I said above, this was my decision, and the awards my baby, so I take any and all criticisms way more personally than maybe I should. Learning how best to run and promote this awards has been a process. We’re still experimenting with how best to announce the awards, with how to promote the winning titles. And we’ll keep experimenting. Undeniably, Amazon’s contribution will help us reach these goals, and I’m sorry that Dennis has chosen to try and undermine the awards in an attempt to make a political point. We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing, and doing all we can do to champion literature in translation.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled postings.

¹ As a corollary to Dennis’s post, I wonder if he’s also withdrawing support from PEN America, the 92nd St. Y, and all of these other organizations that have received funding from Amazon.