{"id":306256,"date":"2017-04-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/04\/28\/chads-very-unscientific-btba-odds-btba-2017\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:10","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:10","slug":"chads-very-unscientific-btba-odds-btba-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/04\/28\/chads-very-unscientific-btba-odds-btba-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Chad's Very Unscientific BTBA Odds [BTBA 2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I started posting the “Why This Book Should Win”: entries for this year’s longlisted BTBA<\/span> titles, I decided to include mostly random, totally unscientific odds for each book both to be shortlisted and to win the whole award. Taken in the aggregate, these odds made no sense. Combined, the ten fiction finalists have a 140% chance of winning the BTBA<\/span>. This is stupid. <\/p>\n

That said, I think these odds—again totally invented straight out of my ass—did end up producing a pretty OK ranking of which titles are the favorites leading into next week’s award announcements. But being a numbers nerd of sorts, I decided to rework all of these and produce a new set of odds—ones that added up to 100% and everything! <\/p>\n

Here’s what I came up with for the poetry books:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Given Pizarnik’s previous appearance on the shortlist and the scope and appeal of this new collection, I think Extracting the Stone of Madness<\/em> is the favorite to win, but La\u00e2bi’s In Praise of Defeat<\/em> is right there . . . <\/p>\n

My personal favorite is Cheer Up, Femme Fatale<\/em>, but it’s going to be hard for Yideum Kim to get past both of the favorites and<\/em> Berlin-Hamlet<\/em>, which would be a great story if it won, given that a novel of Borb\u00e9ly’s also came out this year, and that Ottilie Mulzet would be the first translator to win the BTBA<\/span> for fiction and<\/em> poetry. <\/p>\n

And for the fiction:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Admittedly, War and Turpentine<\/em> got a bump from appearing on the Man Booker International shortlist, but it’s also the only title on this list that was selected by the New York Times<\/em> as one of the five best works of fiction from 2016. <\/p>\n

Right below that, I see Chronicle of the Murdered House<\/em> and Zama<\/i>—two South American classics—in a dead heat. They’re very different books—Chronicle<\/i> is expansive and polyvocal, with a Faulknerian vibe, whereas Zama<\/em> is much more existential, featuring the marvelous, unique voice of its titular character—but both have received glowing reviews from the media and booksellers. <\/p>\n

Ladivine<\/em> and Among Strange Victims<\/em> are good dark horses, with the latter being the trendy pick to win, at least among the participants in Trevor Berrett’s GoodReads forum dedicated to the BTBA<\/span>. <\/p>\n

One final note: it’s quite possible that all ten of the fiction finalists will show up on a BTBA<\/span> list again in the future. Although deceased, Cardoso and Benedetto have other works worthy of translation. As do Diop and Devi. NDiaye’s following grows book by book. Laia Jufresa and Daniel Salda\u00f1a Par\u00eds are just at the start of what look to be very promising, long careers. Lebedev has another book out now that’s a contender for the 2018 award. <\/p>\n

No matter what happens next Thursday, odds are good that we’ll be talking about all of these authors (and their translators!) for years to come. And in the meantime, we have all of these great books to enjoy and talk about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I started posting the “Why This Book Should Win”: entries for this year’s longlisted BTBA titles, I decided to include mostly random, totally unscientific odds for each book both to be shortlisted and to win the whole award. Taken in the aggregate, these odds made no sense. Combined, the ten fiction finalists have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[35996,64586,48766,49386,1646],"class_list":["post-306256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba","tag-btba-2017","tag-btba-fiction","tag-btba-poetry","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306256","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\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315286,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306256\/revisions\/315286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}