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OK, I know we’ve been a bit slow in posting in the “Why This Book Should Win the BTBA” series. (So far we’ve only covered 5 of the 25 longlisted fiction titles.) Not sure that anyone’s really waiting on this, but I thought I’d provide a bit of an explanation and explain what we’re up to.
As I mentioned at the start of each of these five posts, our goal with this series is to provide passionate, fun pieces from people who love the particular title in question. Rather than strive for some sort of “objective overview” of the longlist titles, I’d much rather run manic, overly exuberant write-ups that might inspire people to actually go out and read these books.
Going even further, it seems like fun (and good for readers eveywhere) if we emphasize the competition aspect of this prize. I want to see publishers and translators and whomever lobbying for the book that they think is the best. Reading international literature should be fun, as should arguing about which title deserves to win.
To that end, I’ve asked a bunch of people to write on these books. (My over-exuberance has its limit, and I know there’s only so many times people want to read a post in which I declare a book is “awesome” over and over again.) In fact, in some cases there are multiple people writing about the same title. Which I think is fine, and totally cool, since I’d love this to be as interactive and collaborative as possible, with as many voices as possible chiming in for the book they love.
We still have 28 business days before we announce the finalists in both fiction and poetry—plenty of time to cover the remaining 20 titles. That said, we still have a few titles we need people to write about . . . In particular, Cyclops by Ranko Marinkovic, Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, Georg Letham by Ernst Weiss, and The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Franck.
So if you’ve already read one of these books and loved it send me a note. Especially excited to get booksellers to write in about titles they got enthused about this year.
There we are. And we’ll be back Monday with a number of BTBA posts, including ones on Albert Cossery, Adania Shibli, Jacques Chessex, Amelie Nothomb, and Abdelfattah Kilito.
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Reviewed by Emily Davis
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately, and I’m therefore liable to see everything through science-fiction-colored glasses. But when the pages of The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira refer to “the totality of the present and of eternity”. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
