Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shadow panel shortlist

The shortlists for the IFFP have finally been announced! And boy, does our list differ from the official one.

The Shadow Panel shortlist: 


Bloodlines by Marcello Fois, translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella
See my review here


Zone by Mathias Enard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell
See my review here

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
Review coming soon! 

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
See my review here

The Ravens by Tomas Bannerhed, translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death
See my review here

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
See my review here.  

I was going to talk about how the panel's list differed from my own, but it turns out this is my list. I haven't read The End of Days yet, but based on the other panelists' comments I'm looking forward to it. 

The Official Shortlist: 

By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar
See my review here

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
See my review here

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
See my review here. 

In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomas Gonzalez, translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne
See my review here

F by Daniel Kuhlmann, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway
See my review here

While the Gods were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier, translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent

The only books that are on both lists are the Murakami (a shoo-in, in my opinion) and the Erpenbeck (which may just win the whole thing). I wasn't very impressed by the other ones that made the official list, as you can see from my reviews. I never got around to Mortier, so I think that one will have to stay unread until sometime in the future. 

Read the complete longlist here
Read the shadow panelists' reviews here 

What do you think of these two shortlists? 

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