The Sickness on the IFFP Longlist
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, has been selected for the longlist of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Already a winner of the Spanish “Herralde Prize”, this taut gem of a novel, hailing from Venezuela, is one of four books translated from Latin American Spanish on the longlist.
MacLehose Press has enjoyed a good run of form in the IFFP, with another South American author, the Colombian Evelio Rosero, scooping the 2009 award for The Armies (translated by Anne MacLean, who is on the longlist again this year), and the French writer and director Philippe Claudel winning the 2010 award for the universally acclaimed Brodeck’s Report. Could this already unique brace of consecutive wins be eclipsed by an unprecedented hat-trick?
But that is all in future, so let it just be said that The Sickness is most certainly a novel deserving of anyone’s attention, and that when the shortlist and the eventual winners are announced we will be there to cheer them on, whoever they may be.
The longlist in full
Jenny Erpenbeck Visitation (translated by Susan Bernofsky, from the German); Portobello
Marcelo Figueras Kamchatka (Frank Wynne, Spanish); Atlantic
David Grossman To the End of the Land (Jessica Cohen, Hebrew); Jonathan Cape
Daniel Kehlmann Fame (Carol Brown Janeway, German); Quercus
Véronique Olmi Beside the Sea (Adriana Hunter, French); Peirene Press
Orhan Pamuk The Museum of Innocence (Maureen Freely, Turkish); Faber & Faber
Per Petterson I Curse the River of Time (Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson, Norwegian); Harvill Secker
Santiago Roncagliolo Red April (Edith Grossman, Spanish); Atlantic
Jachym Topol Gargling with Tar (David Short, Czech); Portobello
Alberto Barrera Tyszka The Sickness (Margaret Jull Costa, Spanish); MacLehose Press
Juan Gabriel Vásquez The Secret History of Costaguana (Anne McLean, Spanish); Bloomsbury
Per Wästberg The Journey of Anders Sparrman (Tom Geddes, Swedish); Granta
Michal Witkowski Lovetown (W Martin, Polish); Portobello
Shuichi Yoshida Villain (Philip Gabriel, Japanese); Harvill Secker
Juli Zeh Dark Matter (Christine Lo, German); Harvill Secker
