{"id":295336,"date":"2013-10-07T09:43:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T09:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/10\/07\/nobel-considerations\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:56:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:56:32","slug":"nobel-considerations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/10\/07\/nobel-considerations\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Considerations"},"content":{"rendered":"

BTBA<\/span> blog post \u2013 Michael Orthofer<\/p>\n

Michael Orthofer runs the Complete Review<\/a> \u2013 a book review site with a focus on international fiction \u2013 and its Literary Saloon<\/a> weblog.<\/i><\/p>\n

This Thursday or next the Swedish Academy will likely announce who will receive the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature<\/a> \u2013 still considered the ultimate seal of approval for an author. The Best Translated Book Award has had occasion to consider Nobel laureates\u2019 work over the years, but surprisingly few have fared very well \u2013 as best I can tell, The Hunger Angel<\/a>, by Herta M\u00fcller, was (last year) the first to even make it to the ten-title strong shortlist.<\/p>\n

Of course, the Nobel Prize and the Best Translated Book Award are very different sorts of prizes. The Nobel is given to an author, for his or her entire life\u2019s-work. The BTBA<\/span> goes to a single title \u2013 itself not just the work of the author, but also that of a translator (or several translators, as is the case with some of this year\u2019s titles). Still, it\u2019s interesting to see what overlap there is between the two very different awards.<\/p>\n

There usually are a few titles by Nobelists out every year, and the name-recognition alone usually assures them of at least a closer look by the BTBA<\/span> judges. This year\u2019s small batch \u2013 just two titles, as far as I can tell: Mo Yan\u2019s Sandalwood Death<\/a> and Elfriede Jelinek\u2019s Her Not All Her<\/a> \u2013 looks to be a particularly strong one.<\/p>\n

The authors of these two works are among the more controversial laureates in recent memory, but one of the nice things about the works we\u2019re considering is that they don\u2019t really play into the popular\/media narrative about the authors. Sandalwood Death<\/i>, set over a hundred years ago, deals with older Chinese history and makes it easy to avoid the issue of whether or not Mo kowtows to the present-day regime too much. Similarly, Her Not All Her<\/i> avoids the politics, ostensibly harsh feminism, and coarse language that many have found objectionable in much of Jelinek\u2019s work \u2013 while, as a work that is as much a performance-piece as it is a work of fiction, it also exposes English-speaking audiences to a neglected part of her output, her unusual (by American and British standards) stage-work.<\/p>\n

Sandalwood Death<\/i> was one of the first of the eligible-for-this-year\u2019s-BTBA<\/span> books that I read (almost a year ago), and I immediately pegged it as a favorite for the prize (and it confirmed to me what the Swedish Academy saw in Mo Yan). This is historic fiction of a high order, Mo slowly building his story to the (prolonged) torture that gives the book its title and capturing the China of those transitional times exceptionally well. It is a drawn-out story, and the torture is brutal, making it in some ways a difficult read, but if you can get past that it is certainly a very impressive work. Howard Goldblatt\u2019s excellent translation also suggests some of the advantages of a single translator being responsible for more than just individual works by an author: responsible for almost all of the English translations of Mo\u2019s fiction, Goldblatt obviously has an excellent feel for Mo\u2019s writing and what the author is trying to do.<\/p>\n

As to Her Not All Her<\/i> \u2013 well, I was already on a jury that awarded Damion Searls\u2019 translation of that work a prize: before it was published, the manuscript won the 2011 Austrian Cultural Forum Translation Prize<\/a>. A fascinating personal exploration of the writer Robert Walser, it is a compact tour de force in both the original and English \u2013 and a beautiful volume in the Cahiers series<\/a> (explorations of writing and translating that should be of interest to all who are interested in the BTBA<\/span> \u2026).<\/p>\n

But what of the possible future laureates who have books eligible for this year\u2019s Best Translated Book Award? Perhaps even this year\u2019s laureate \u2026.. In the absence of any better guide (the Swedish Academy is secretive about the whole process, and doesn\u2019t reveal who is being considered, much less who the five finalists they choose the winner from are \u2013 well, not until 50 years from now), the names on the betting sheet offered by British bookmaker Ladbrokes at least suggest some or most of the likely contenders (along with many who certainly aren\u2019t in the running). At well over a hundred names this year, they take something of a kitchen-sink approach \u2013 toss in every name they\u2019ve heard of \u2013 but among all these names those of most of the serious contenders for the 2013 prize are also to be found. (For now you should be able to find the list here<\/a>, but they\u2019ll take it down when prize-day comes.)<\/p>\n

Surprisingly many of the authors on the Ladbrokes list have books eligible for this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span>. Among the books we\u2019re considering \u2013 and I think we\u2019ll be considering these pretty seriously \u2013 by (in my view) possible Nobel-contenders (in parentheses: their Ladbrokes odds, last I checked) are:<\/p>\n

\u2022\tMelancholy II<\/a> – Jon Fosse (9\/1)
\n\u2022\tBetween Friends<\/a> – Amos Oz (16\/1)
\n\u2022\tThe Infatuations<\/a> – Javier Mar\u00edas (33\/1)
\n\u2022\tThe Fall of the Stone City<\/a>– Ismail Kadare (50\/1)
\n\u2022\tThe Retrospective<\/a> – A.B.Yehoshua (100\/1)<\/p>\n

Among the books by authors who I don\u2019t think stand a particularly good Nobel chance \u2013 at least for this year\u2019s prize \u2013 but might (or, in some cases, should) be in the BTBA<\/span>-running are:<\/p>\n

\u2022\tBlinding: The Left Wing<\/i> Mircea C\u0103rt\u0103rescu (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tDays in the History of Silence<\/a> – Merethe Lindstr\u00f8m (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tFata Morgana Books<\/i> Jonathan Littell (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tMy Struggle: Book Two (A Man in Love)<\/a> – Karl Ove Knausgaard (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tShantytown<\/i> C\u00e9sar Aira (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tThe Tuner of Silences<\/a> – Mia Couto (100\/1)<\/p>\n

And then there are the authors who I don\u2019t think even belong anywhere in the Nobel discussion (and whose books I suspect won\u2019t quite make it the BTBA<\/span> longlist cut-off, either \u2026):<\/p>\n

\u2022\tThe Dance of the Seagull<\/i> Andrea Camilleri (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tThe Dinner<\/a> – Herman Koch (100\/1)
\n\u2022\tTreasure Hunt<\/i> Andrea Camilleri (100\/1)<\/p>\n

Extensive though the Ladbrokes list is, it\u2019s not comprehensive \u2013 and some of the likely contenders for the BTBA<\/span> are by authors who don\u2019t figure on it \u2013 but maybe should.<\/p>\n

Arnon Grunberg is still a bit young for Nobel Prize-consideration (despite an enormous body of work), but I think he will be in the mix eventually \u2013 and his Tirza<\/a> should, I think, easily make it at least onto the BTBA<\/span> longlist.<\/p>\n

The author of last year\u2019s BTBA<\/span> winner, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai, has another title in the running this year, Seiobo There Below<\/i>, and early word is that it is again a contender. (This book has a different translator \u2013 Ottilie Mulzet \u2013 and it will be interesting to compare the approaches to Krasznahorkai\u2019s challenging prose she takes with those of last year\u2019s winning translator, George Szirtes.) As to the Nobel: while there has been a relatively recent Hungarian Nobel winner \u2013 the great Imre Kert\u00e9sz \u2013 Krasznahorkai\u2019s work is entirely different, so that shouldn\u2019t be held against him. Still, the Hungarian connection can\u2019t help his chances, as there are several other strong Hungarian candidates this (and every recent) year, led by P\u00e9ter N\u00e1das \u2026..<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s Mikhail Shishkin \u2013 a BTBA<\/span> finalist last year with Maidenhair<\/a> \u2013 with The Light and the Dark<\/i>. I haven\u2019t seen this one yet, but the Shishkin-word is finally spreading in translation (after he\u2019s already racked up most of the big Russian literary prizes) and he has to be a hot tip for the Nobel in the coming years; I suspect this title will also at the very least figure in the BTBA<\/span> longlist discussion.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see very soon who this year\u2019s Nobel laureate is. As to the BTBA<\/span>, that\u2019s an enjoyably more extended countdown \u2013 and one done with considerably more transparency than the Nobel. You know which books are being considered (all of them ! \u2013 all the ones listed in the Translation Database<\/a>, which is pretty much (we hope) all the possibly eligible books (first-time translations of works of fiction, distributed in the US in 2013)), and you can learn about what the judges are excited about in these weekly blog-postings. The longlist announcement is still a ways away \u2013 March 11, 2014 \u2013 but I think you\u2019ll have more information to rely on suggesting in what directions we\u2019re leaning than the Ladbrokes odds sheets might offer \u2026..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BTBA blog post \u2013 Michael Orthofer Michael Orthofer runs the Complete Review \u2013 a book review site with a focus on international fiction \u2013 and its Literary Saloon weblog. This Thursday or next the Swedish Academy will likely announce who will receive the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature \u2013 still considered the ultimate seal of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[1646],"class_list":["post-295336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318046,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295336\/revisions\/318046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}