Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008

Latest update 'The winner of the 2013 Prize is 'The Detour' by Gerbrand Bakker, translated by David Colmer'

Winner

Omega Minor

Paul Verhaeghen

Dalkey Archive Press

In hospital in 1995, Paul Andermans, a young man who has been beaten up by neo-Nazis, meets Jozef de Heer, an elderly Jew who has tried to take his own life. De Heer survived Auschwitz thanks to his talent as a conjuror and later became involved in the building of the Berlin Wall. Andermans decides to write down de Heers's story. However, Andermans soon begins to realise that de Heer...

Read about 'Omega Minor'

Omega Minor

Paul Verhaeghen

Winner, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

In hospital in 1995, Paul Andermans, a young man who has been beaten up by neo-Nazis, meets Jozef de Heer, an elderly Jew who has tried to take his own life.

De Heer survived Auschwitz thanks to his talent as a conjuror and later became involved in the building of the Berlin Wall. Andermans decides to write down de Heers's story.

However, Andermans soon begins to realise that de Heer is lying to him about his life, even stealing details from stories by other writers.

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press

About the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008

The Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives the winning author and translator equal status: each receives £5,000.

First awarded in 1990 to Orhan Pamuk and translator Victoria Holbrook for The White Castle, the Prize ran until 1995 and was then revived in 2000 with the support of Arts Council England, who continue to fund the award. The 2012 prize was won by Aharon Appelfeld and Jeffrey M Green for Blooms of Darkness

Previous Winners

2012 Aharon Appelfeld, Blooms of Darkness translated by Jeffrey M Green (Alma), Hebrew

2011 Santiago Roncagliolo, Red April translated by Edith Grossman (Atlantic Books), Spanish
2010 Philippe Claudel, Brodeck's Report (translated by John Cullen; French) MacLehose Press
2009 Evelio Rosero, The Armies (translated by Anne McLean from the Spanish)
2008 Paul Verhaeghen, Omega Minor (translated by the author from the Dutch)
2007 José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (Portuguese, trans. Daniel Hahn)
2006 Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses (Norwegian; Anne Born; Harvill Secker)
2005 Frédéric Beigbeder, Windows on the World (French, trans. by Frank Wynne)
2004 Javier Cercas, Soldiers of Salamina (Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean)
2003 Per Olov Enquist, The Visit of the Royal Physician (Swedish, Tiina Nunnally)
2002 W G Sebald (posthumously) Austerlitz (German, Anthea Bell)
1996-2001 Prize in abeyance.

1995 Gert Hofmann, The Film Explainer (German, Michael Hofmann)
1994 Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (Vietnamese, Phanh Thanh Hao)
1993 José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (Portuguese, Giovanni Pontiero)
1992 Simon Leys, The Death Of Napoleon (French, Patricia Clancy)
1991 Milan Kundera, Immortality (Czech, Peter Kussi)
1990 Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle (Turkish, Victoria Holbrook)