The prize marks the conclusion of a brilliantly conceived project to engage readers and reading groups with translated fiction, organised by English PEN, the Reading Agency and the British Centre for Literary Translation. Reading groups across the UK, many of which were almost entirely unfamiliar with translated fiction, were invited to shadow the IFFP shortlist, and more than 300 people took part.

More than 100 of these readers were then able to gather at the Free Word Centre in London on Saturday, for a day of events and talks. Many of the authors and translators of the shortlisted titles were in attendance, as were IFFP judges Elif Shafak and Frank Wynne, who talked about the world of translated literature, the judging process and interviewed the writers and translators about their work.

Feedback from the attendees was very positive, with many reading group members saying they had not read very many books in translation, and that this scheme had “opened a whole new world”. Their eventual vote proclaimed Trieste the winner of the inaugural readers’ prize. Both Daša and her translator Ellen Elias-Bursać were in attendance to claim their champagne, which was promptly cracked open, Grand Prix style.

The full shortlist for both the Readers’ Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is as follows:

Bundu by Chris Barnard, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Alma Books)

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (Harvill Secker)

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean (Harvill Secker)

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare, translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson (Canongate)

Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Pushkin Press)

Trieste by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać (MacLehose Press)

Serés is an acclaimed novelist and renowned wit, but his first book in English translation is actually a collection of stories by five Russian writers that he has effectively rescued from obscurity. It will be published in July, but festival-goers may find that a few early-bird copies have been made available. Here is the blurb:

Drift through outer space with a doomed cosmonaut whose engine is kaput; return to an irradiated village with an elderly couple who want to go home; ask yourself, did Elvis really play a concert in Red Square? 

Twenty-one impish and irrepressible stories by five neglected or forgotten Russian writers. Fresh-faced vignettes from modern St Petersburg; hair-raising tales of state insanity, snatched from the Soviet archives; dark fables from the days of serfdom, when the land was untamed and life was brutish and short. 

Each mines a discrete facet of Russian life, history or culture, and taken as a whole they sketch a historical arc from the nineteenth century to the age of the budget airline, offering the reader a unique combination of daring, wit, dash and charm.

Tickets are still available, priced at £5. See the festival website for details.

Hosted by the excellent Rosie Goldsmith, the evening saw eight writers from across Europe discuss their work, before extracts were read by either the authors themselves or their translators. MacLehose Press was represented by Norbert Gstrein, who principally discussed his most recent work, Winters in the South.

In a wide-ranging interview, Norbert discussed the advantages of observing his native Austria from “one thousand kilometres away”, and also the curious experience of having only a small portion of his work available in English – a common occurrence amongst the assembled authors. He also commended his translators (Anthea Bell and Julian Evans), remarking that he found the English edition to be “a new book”. Julian then read from the opening to Winters in the South, describing it as “symphonic”.

The rest of the evening saw a varied programme, with the texts under discussion varying from a German literary novel centred on a mussel feast to a cultural exploration of twentieth-century Europe through the prism of the Lipizzaner horses. It was notable that several authors resisted being defined by their nationality or politics (when asked if he was Catalan or Spanish, Jordi Punto drew the biggest applause of the night by replying “I’m Jordi”), placing the emphasis on the outstanding quality of the books, rather than simply the fact that they were “translated fiction”.

All the authors were eloquent in their English, and Rosie Goldsmith orchestrated conversations that ranged from the hilarious to the sobering: many of the novels reflected to some extent on the horrors of fascism and communism, yet did so with a wonderful sense of absurdist humour. Jáchym Topol’s satire of holocaust tourism and Miha Mazzini’s romantic chronicle of a limping communist postman were particular highlights. The evening was then rounded off with a drinks reception provided by the Spanish embassy.

It’s been an exciting week for our parent company Quercus over in New York where a gathering of authors, editors, industry figures and friends met at the Italian Consulate in New York last Thursday to celebrate the launch of Quercus and its imprints in North America.

Along with Quercus co-founders Mark Smith and Wayne Davies, Jon Riley, editor-in-chief of the Quercus imprint, Christopher MacLehose, Publisher of the MacLehose Press, and Jo Fletcher, Publisher of Jo Fletcher Books were all in attendance.

Read more over on the Quercus USA blog.

English PEN have just announced the full list of recipients for their PEN Promotes and PEN Translates programmes and La Carroza de Bolívar by Colombian author Evelio Rosero is on the list for the latter.

La Carroza de Bolívar (The Bolívar Carriage or the slightly daft-sounding Bolívar’s Carnival Float) is Evelio Rosero’s most recent novel, and perhaps his most controversial. It concerns a contented gynaecologist, with two houses and an attractive wife, who decides to use the the regional carnival as a opportunity to mock the nation’s founder: Simon de Bolívar, El Libertador. But his actions are not taken kindly by his fellow citizens, who will not stand for any questioning of the founding myths. The local governor, the military and even a recently formed guerrilla unit mobilise to oppose him, and before long the doctor finds that his protest has placed him in mortal danger.

Evelio Rosero has good reason to be sceptical about the myth of El Libertador. He grew up in the city of Pasto in south Colombia, where, in December 1822, following a loyalist uprising, forces under Bolívar’s overall control looted the city for three days. Even today, almost two hundred years later, that “Black Christmas” is still remembered and mourned.

In La Carroza de Bolívar Rosero examines Bolívar’s generally spotless reputation and asks whether Colombia’s long history of violence can be attributed in part to the form of democracy he installed after the wars of independence. With all sides in the ongoing current civil conflict claiming to be his spiritual descendants, it is clear that his legacy divides the nation as much as it unites it.

Evelio Rosero was the winner of the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Armies, a novel that was widely applauded for it’s brave portrayal of the full horrors of the civil war. In Good Offices, a much earlier novel, but only published in English in 2011, he exposed through satirical fantasia the iniquities of the the Catholic Church. With La Carroza de Bolívar, he has confirmed his reputation as a fearless sifter of truth from myth and dogma.

The official reading for the prize will take place at the South Bank Centre on Monday 20 May. NDiaye will be joined by fellow finalists UR Ananthamurthy (India), Lydia Davis (USA), Intizar Husain (Pakistan), Yan Lianke (China), Josip Novakovich (Canada), and Peter Stamm (Switzerland). Tickets to the reading are still available, priced at £10-£12.

And on Friday 24 May, she will take part in a reading at the Hay Festival with two fellow finalists, Lydia Davis and Intizar Husain. This is free but ticketed event. For details see the Hay Festival website. The Hay Festival winner’s event is the following day, so fingers crossed for that.

If should be stressed that if you have the slightest curiosity about the youngest finalist for the prize yet you are strongly advised to seek out tickets — it took a major shortlist to tempt her to London and she might not be back for a while! And if you have not read Three Strong Women, you are equally strongly advised to invest in the new paperback edition . . .

Best of luck to Madame Ndiaye, and indeed to all the finalists.

The shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize was announced this morning, and Daša Drndić is on it. Here is the list in full:

Bundu by Chris Barnard, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns

The Detour by Gerbrand Bakker, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey and Anne McLean

The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare, translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson

Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia

Trieste by Daša Drndić, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać

Frank Wynne, literary translator and one this year’s judges said:

At the heart of this audacious, fractured tale, the poignant search of a mother for the son abducted as part of the Lebensborn programme shimmers liked a flawed jewel. Ellen Elias-Bursac’s luminous translation brings both pathos and veracity to the often disorienting blizzard of facts, of names and voices in Daša Drndić’s documentary novel. Sprawling, terrifying and meticulously detailed, Trieste captures the true horror and confusion of war.

Daša will be in the U.K. next week for two public readings. Details below, but do try to make one of them. Hearing her read from Trieste is a truly unforgettable experience. For now, many congratulations and best of luck to Daša. The winner will be announced on 20th May.

Tuesday 16^th April
“Meet the voices of modern Croatian Literature”
18.30-20.30 @ The Nightingale Room, Keats House (library),
Keats Grove, Hampstead, London, NW3 2RR

Wednesday 17^th April
“Contemporary Croatian Literature: Inside and Out”
Chaired by Josip Novakovich, and Roman Simić-Bodrožić
18:30 – 20:30 @ Europe House, 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU

1990: Russians Remember a Turning Point (translated by Arch Tait) is the English translation of a mammoth project of social and historical anthropology undertaken by Irina Prokhorova, editor of the Russian journal New Literary Observer. 1990 was a year of unresolved tensions and embryonic change, coming between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and the August 1991 coup that precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book brings together articles, photographs, interviews with journalists and perceptive critical analyses in charting the key developments of the year.

We were lucky enough to have both Makine and Prokhorova (alongside Mikhail Shishkin from the Quercus list) visit the U.K. last week for a series of events that took in London’s South Bank Centre, The Oxford Literary Festival and an evening at Hardy’s Brasserie around the corner, where a Russian feast was spiced up by readings and vignettes from the authors. A whirlwind tour in what turned out to be somewhat Siberian weather . . .

Brief Loves that Live Forever and 1990: Russians Remember are both available in hardback, at £12.00 and £25.oo respectively.

We are are very happy to note (note clearly being too feeble a verb) that Trieste by Daša Drndić has been long-listed for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

The long-list, unveiled last Friday, is one of the strongest, if not the strongest to date, with veteran writers-in-English-translation such as Orhan Pamuk, Ismail Kadare and Gerbrand Bakker lining up against acclaimed newcomers including Laurent Binet, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Drndić herself. 

And when you consider that the bestselling non-crime translation of the last year (The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared) is not listed, it is tempting to look back at the last year as a phenomenal one for literary fiction in translation. Let’s hope 2o13 is a phenomenal year for Daša Drndić.

The Longlist in full:

Gerbrand Bakker: The Detour (translated by David Colmer from the Dutch), and published by Harvill Secker

Chris Barnard: Bundu (Michiel Heyns; Afrikaans), Alma Books

Laurent Binet: HHhH (Sam Taylor; French), Harvill Secker

Dasa Drndic: Trieste (Ellen Elias-Bursac; Croatian), MacLehose Press

Pawel Huelle: Cold Sea Stories (Antonia Lloyd-Jones; Polish), Comma Press

Pia Juul: The Murder of Halland (Martin Aitken; Danish), Peirene Press

Ismail Kadare: The Fall of the Stone City (John Hodgson; Albanian), Canongate

Khaled Khalifa: In Praise of Hatred (Leri Price; Arabic), Doubleday

Karl Ove Knausgaard: A Death in the Family (Don Bartlett; Norwegian), Harvill Secker

Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Satantango (George Szirtes; Hungarian), Tuskar Rock

Alain Mabanckou: Black Bazaar (Sarah Ardizzone; French), Serpent’s Tail

Diego Marani: The Last of the Vostyachs (Judith Landry; Italian), Dedalus

Andrés Neuman, Traveller of the Century (Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia; Spanish), Pushkin Press

Orhan Pamuk: Silent House (Robert Finn; Turkish), Faber

Juan Gabriel Vásquez: The Sound of Things Falling (Anne McLean; Spanish), Bloomsbury

Enrique Vila-Matas: Dublinesque (Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean; Spanish), Harvill Secker

Trieste is available in paperback.

“How to canonise Eileen Battersby?” asked Christopher MacLehose when he saw the stunning Irish Times spread on Otto de Kat’s Julia, which, making a mockery of the trend towards minimising review space, also took in de Kat’s previous novels in translation, Man on the Move and The Figure in the Distance . . .

“Julia is de Kat’s fourth novel, his third to be translated into English. It acquires an increasingly subtle and relentless power. Formerly a leading publisher and critic in the Netherlands, de Kat (real name Jan Geurt Gaarlandt, born in 1946) began his writing life as a poet. His first novel, The Figure in the Distance (2002), took restlessness as its central theme. States of mind dominate his work. In Man on the Move (2004, translated 2009), the central character realises that, despite his endless travel, life is something that happens to other people. Comparisons with Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea (1938) are obvious and have been made by reviewers across Europe. It is an ode not to friendship but to the idea of friendship. In common with Julia, it is as much a poem as it is a novel.

* * *

Julia is another of those deceptively ‘little’ novels, just under 200 pages, that say so much more than many narratives twice the length. Included among the longlisted nominations for the forthcoming International Impac Dublin Literary Award, Julia is extraordinary. In Chris Dudok, de Kat has created a portrait of a passive son, lover, husband and dreamer who lives in a state of quiet lamentation. He is not a hero, only a man. His story is one of regret, a life lost in so many ways. It is as chilling as it is sad and familiar. Anyone who read Man on the Move will probably have already reached for Julia, or will want to. These are novels of subtle emotional distance that compel a reader into a cohesive response that it as physical as a blow to the heart.”

You can read the full, much, much longer review here.

Both Julia and Man on the Move are available in paperback.