Folio + Foreign Fiction

So a bunch of literary Brits got fed up with the Booker for pandering to popularity and retaliated by creating what they promised would be a more literary literary award, called The Folio Prize, which announced its first winner, who got $66,612:

George Saunders, Tenth of December [Kindle]

A.S. Byatt found it "very sad" that of the eight Folio finalists, five were American and only one was British (Jane Gardam). Byatt bemoaned the "dumbing down" of UK fiction which lacks the "energy" of yesteryear, and, although the US books are more "inventive and beautifully written," she noted they were a tad self-centered in their American myopia: "I don’t think there’s one that is the slightest bit interested in Britain or Europe or Africa or Asia."

We should all be reading more foreign fiction. Now you may have particular interest in the Ukrainian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky whose book of fables, Autobiography of a Corpse, is longlisted for one of the fiction prizes below. The only two authors to appear on both lists are Javier Marías, for The Infatuations, and superstar Karl Ove Knausgaard for My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love.

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist of fifteen titles:

Back to Back by Julia Franck

Brief Loves that Live Forever by Andreï Makine

Butterflies in November by Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir

The Corpse Washer by Sinan Antoon

The Dark Road by Ma Jian

Exposure by Sayed Kashua

The Infatuations by Javier Marías

The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim

My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard

A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Ogawa Yoko

The Sorrow of Angels by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Strange Weather in Tokyo by Kawakami Hiromi

Ten by Andrej Longo

The Best Translated Book Award has a longlist of 25 titles including these highlights:

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (translated by Ann Goldstein)

Her Not All Her by Elfriede Jelinek (trans. Damion Searls)

My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard, (trans. Don Bartlett)

Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (trans. Joanne Turnbull)

The Infatuations by Javier Marías (trans. Margaret Jull Costa)

In the Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina (trans. Edith Grossman)

The Whispering Muse by Sjón (trans. Victoria Cribb)

The Devil's Workshop by Jáchym Topol, (trans. Alex Zucker)

The End of Love by Marcos Giralt Torrente (trans. Katherine Silver)

City of Angels: or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud by Christa Wolf (trans. Damion Searls)

Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan (trans. Howard Goldblatt)