ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I am indebted to Tara at BookSexy for news about the 2013 Man Booker International Prize Shortlist, and I’m rather pleased to see that I’ve read three of the authors on this exotic shopping list.

• U R Ananthamurthy (India/translation) (I’ve ordered Samskara)
• Aharon Appelfeld (Israel/translation): see my review of Blooms of Darkness
• Lydia Davis (USA) (I’ve ordered The End of the Story)
• Intizar Husain (Pakistan/translation) (I’ve ordered Basti)
• Yan Lianke (China/translation): see my reviews of Dream of Ding Village and  Lenin’s Kisses and a Sensational Snippet
• Marie NDiaye (France/translation) (I’ve ordered Three Strong Women) See Stu’s review at Winston’s Dad.
• Josip Novakovich (Canada) (I’ve ordered Infidelities)
• Marilynne Robinson (USA) (I’ve read Gilead, but was underwhelmed, to say the least, and am not interested in reading anything else)
• Vladimir Sorokin (Russia/translation) (I’ve ordered The Queue, interested to see how it treats the same theme as The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin) Update, see my review)
• Peter Stamm (Switzerland/translation) (I’ve ordered Seven Years)

So much for my post-Christmas economy drive.  But you can admire my restraint, I am going to try for the non-translated ones at the library!

What I particularly like about this list is that it treats authors in translation as equals, encouraging booklovers to read widely from all over the world.

Congratulations to all the authors, translators, and publishers, (and a special thank you to Text Publishing who have brought Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses to Australian readers and many other fine books in translation besides.)