Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011
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Winner
Red April
Atlantic BooksSince the literary world started to go crazy for Roberto Bolaño, there has been a real resurgence of interest in South American writing - and on the basis of Santiago Roncagliolo's debut novel it's easy to see why. This tense political thriller is effortlessly written and breathes new life into that tired genre.
It is Holy Week in Lima, but the atmosphere on the streets is hellish. Peru is awash with assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance; the crime rate is soaring and the country stand in the middle of a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counter-insurgence.
In the middle of the maelstrom is Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, a hapless, by-the-book and unambitious prosecutor. His life has been unremarkable, touched only by the death of his mother and his love of literature. But when he is surprisingly put in charge of a gruesome and unsettling murder investigation. It's case that will take him to the brink of his own sanity, forcing Saldivar to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty.
Remarkable, erudite and utterly compelling, there is little wonder that Roncagiolo became the youngest ever winner of the Alfaguara Prize, one of Spanish most prestigious literary awards.
Red April
Santiago Roncagliolo
Winner, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Since the literary world started to go crazy for Roberto Bolaño, there has been a real resurgence of interest in South American writing - and on the basis of Santiago Roncagliolo's debut novel it's easy to see why. This tense political thriller is effortlessly written and breathes new life into that tired genre.
It is Holy Week in Lima, but the atmosphere on the streets is hellish. Peru is awash with assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance; the crime rate is soaring and the country stand in the middle of a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counter-insurgence.
In the middle of the maelstrom is Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, a hapless, by-the-book and unambitious prosecutor. His life has been unremarkable, touched only by the death of his mother and his love of literature. But when he is surprisingly put in charge of a gruesome and unsettling murder investigation. It's case that will take him to the brink of his own sanity, forcing Saldivar to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty.
Remarkable, erudite and utterly compelling, there is little wonder that Roncagiolo became the youngest ever winner of the Alfaguara Prize, one of Spanish most prestigious literary awards.Publisher: Atlantic Books
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 was awarded to Peruvian author Santiago Roncagliolo for his third novel, Red April (Atlantic Books). At 36, Roncagliolo was the youngest-ever author, as well as the first from Peru, to win the Prize.
The £10,000 award is shared equally with Roncagliolo’s American translator, Edith Grossman, who is also a first-time winner. She was previously shortlisted for the Prize in 2003.
Santiago Roncagliolo commented:
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize closes a wonderful "British season" for me and my book. During the last twelve months I’ve been to the UK many times to talk at festivals, libraries, bookshops and universities and I am sure that the support of all the people I met during those visits, including my publishers, my agents and my great translator, has been instrumental in my receiving of the Prize. I want to share it with them.
Red April is a book with a lot of British influences, from Ian McEwan's The Innocent to Allan Moore's graphic novel From Hell. Maybe that is why British readers have been so generous to me. But I also believe that the British are looking back to Latin American writers – many of my friends and colleagues from Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia have also been listed for the Prize. I am very happy to have won, but I was already honoured to be on the longlist, to be considered in the same league as such amazing writers. I guess this is a Prize for all of us!
Read a full interview with Santiago about his win
Edith Grossman commented:
I am thrilled that this wonderful novel by a young writer has won so prestigious a Prize and I am grateful to the judges for their decision. Translating the work of a fine writer is sheer pleasure: the better the writing, the more satisfying the challenge for the translator. This is why I so enjoyed the opportunity to bring the work of Santiago over into English. His use of language is clean and sharp and perceptive, and regardless of the kind of piece he has written, that wonderful quality is constant.
Boyd Tonkin, Chair of Judges, commented:
Santiago Roncagliolo has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize with a novel that will grip, excite, disturb and challenge all its readers. Rooted in but not confined to the cycle of terror and counter-terror in Peru, Red April deploys with tremendous skill and cunning the arts of the political thriller in order to dramatise the struggle between love and hate, creation and destruction, in a community, a country – and in the human mind itself.
About the shortlist
Boyd Tonkin, judge and Literary Editor of the Independent, commented:
This year's shortlist both salutes some much-loved authors and introduces exciting new voices. As always, it combines a supremely high standard of imagination and expression with a sweeping variety of forms and settings.
He continued:
From Orhan Pamuk's romantic epic of love and change in Istanbul to Santiago Roncagliolo's thrilling, chilling novel of Peru in conflict; from Per Petterson's wistful and touching account of a troubled youth in Norway to Jenny Erpenbeck's lyrical vision of German history via a single house and its inhabitants, the selection will move, inspire and enlighten. And this unique Prize also pays tribute again to the art of the translators who have brought these compelling stories to an English-language readership.
Shortlist
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Visitation
Portobello
Visitation
Jenny Erpenbeck
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Visitation takes place in a chillingly spooky house. The stories that surround the house and Visitation build a history of horror, taking in the German population during the Jahrhundertwende, the turn-of-the-century shift, and over the following decades of war, National Socialism and Soviet occupation.
Publisher: Portobello
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Kamchatka
Atlantic
Kamchatka
Marcelo Figueras
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The narrator of Kamchatka looks back to a pivotal moment in his childhood in Argentina, trying to make sense of the traumatic events that tore his family apart.
Publisher: Atlantic
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Museum of Innocence
Faber
Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The opening sentence - 'It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn't know it.' - sets the tone of an elegiac, meditative and also deeply involved novel, obsessed with the nature of desire, love and longing.
Publisher: Faber
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I Curse the River of Time
Vintage
I Curse the River of Time
Per Petterson
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Everything goes wrong for thirtysomething Arvid Jansen in one autumnal weekend in 1989. With a backdrop of the crumbling of Eastern communism, he is divorcing, watching his mother die from cancer and feels lost.
Publisher: Vintage
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Red April
Atlantic Books
Red April
Santiago Roncagliolo
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Since the literary world started to go crazy for Roberto Bolaño, there has been a real resurgence of interest in South American writing - and on the basis of Santiago Roncagliolo's debut novel it's easy to see why. This tense political thriller is effortlessly written and breathes new life into that tired genre.
It is Holy Week in Lima, but the atmosphere on the streets is hellish. Peru is awash with assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance; the crime rate is soaring and the country stand in the middle of a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counter-insurgence.
In the middle of the maelstrom is Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, a hapless, by-the-book and unambitious prosecutor. His life has been unremarkable, touched only by the death of his mother and his love of literature. But when he is surprisingly put in charge of a gruesome and unsettling murder investigation. It's case that will take him to the brink of his own sanity, forcing Saldivar to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty.
Remarkable, erudite and utterly compelling, there is little wonder that Roncagiolo became the youngest ever winner of the Alfaguara Prize, one of Spanish most prestigious literary awards.Publisher: Atlantic Books
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The Sickness
Quercus
The Sickness
Alberto Barrera Tyszka
Shortlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
In this strange, understated yet compelling debut novel, Venezuelan writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka explores the meaning of sickness: physical, mental and social.
Publisher: Quercus
Longlist
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Visitation
Portobello
Visitation
Jenny Erpenbeck
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Visitation takes place in a chillingly spooky house. The stories that surround the house and Visitation build a history of horror, taking in the German population during the Jahrhundertwende, the turn-of-the-century shift, and over the following decades of war, National Socialism and Soviet occupation.
Publisher: Portobello
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Kamchatka
Atlantic
Kamchatka
Marcelo Figueras
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The narrator of Kamchatka looks back to a pivotal moment in his childhood in Argentina, trying to make sense of the traumatic events that tore his family apart.
Publisher: Atlantic
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To the End of the Land
Vintage
To the End of the Land
David Grossman
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Ofer is on the brink of being released from his army service in Israel. His mother Ora waits at home, waiting to celebrate, only to find that Ofer has to return to the front for a major offensive. Caught between hope and despair, Ora simply leaves her house, without leaving any way of contacting her, hoping that by her distance from the notifers – those that tell of the deaths of military men – her son will return safe and well.
This is a stunning work, a novel of immense power that gives depth and perspective on the human cost of war and warfare. Shocking, tender, and rhythmic, it is hard to do justice to the dextrousness of the narrative, of its drive and stark beauty. The comparison has been made to War and Peace, and for once this is justified. This is a book resolutely for and of our times.
Publisher: Vintage
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Fame
Quercus
Fame
Daniel Kehlmann
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Short story collection from the bad boy of Euro-lit. As wise as it is hilarious, Fame is a gloriously twisted handbook to modern life.
Publisher: Quercus
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Beside the Sea
Pereine Press
Beside the Sea
Veronique Olmi
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
On a rainy night, a mother sets out on a bus journey to the seaside with her two small sons, knowing that it will be the last trip they ever make. What she hopes will be a happy last memory for them becomes yet another nightmare.
Publisher: Pereine Press
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Museum of Innocence
Faber
Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
The opening sentence - 'It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn't know it.' - sets the tone of an elegiac, meditative and also deeply involved novel, obsessed with the nature of desire, love and longing.
Publisher: Faber
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I Curse the River of Time
Vintage
I Curse the River of Time
Per Petterson
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Everything goes wrong for thirtysomething Arvid Jansen in one autumnal weekend in 1989. With a backdrop of the crumbling of Eastern communism, he is divorcing, watching his mother die from cancer and feels lost.
Publisher: Vintage
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Red April
Atlantic Books
Red April
Santiago Roncagliolo
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Since the literary world started to go crazy for Roberto Bolaño, there has been a real resurgence of interest in South American writing - and on the basis of Santiago Roncagliolo's debut novel it's easy to see why. This tense political thriller is effortlessly written and breathes new life into that tired genre.
It is Holy Week in Lima, but the atmosphere on the streets is hellish. Peru is awash with assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance; the crime rate is soaring and the country stand in the middle of a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counter-insurgence.
In the middle of the maelstrom is Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, a hapless, by-the-book and unambitious prosecutor. His life has been unremarkable, touched only by the death of his mother and his love of literature. But when he is surprisingly put in charge of a gruesome and unsettling murder investigation. It's case that will take him to the brink of his own sanity, forcing Saldivar to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty.
Remarkable, erudite and utterly compelling, there is little wonder that Roncagiolo became the youngest ever winner of the Alfaguara Prize, one of Spanish most prestigious literary awards.Publisher: Atlantic Books
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Gargling with Tar
Portobello
Gargling with Tar
Jachym Topol
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Czechoslovakia, 1968: The Soviet troops have just invaded the country and, for the young orphan Ilya, life is suddenly turned on its head.
Publisher: Portobello
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The Sickness
Quercus
The Sickness
Alberto Barrera Tyszka
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
In this strange, understated yet compelling debut novel, Venezuelan writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka explores the meaning of sickness: physical, mental and social.
Publisher: Quercus
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The Secret History of Costaguana
Bloomsbury
The Secret History of Costaguana
Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
What is it about Joseph Conrad that makes him the ultimate writer to fictionalise? David Miller did so in Today. And So does Juan Gabriel Vasquez in The Secret History of Costaguana.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
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The Journey of Anders Sparrman
Per Wastberg
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Anders Sparrman, b.1748, the son of a country rector in Uppsala, studies medicine and becomes an apostle of the botanist Carl Linnaeus. He sails as a ship's doctor to China.
In 1772 he becomes tutor to the children of the Swedish Resident in Cape Town, from there joins Cook's second voyage to Antarctica and Tahiti as assistant to the German botanists Johann and Georg Forster. He travels to the African interior with his guide, Daniel Immelman and later writes 'A voyage to the Cape of Good Hope', towards the Antarctic polar circle, and round the world: But chiefly into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres, from the year 1772 to 1776. In Stockolm, he is appointed keeper of natural historical collections but quarrels with his colleagues. He then travels to Senegal, witnesses the cruelty of slavery. Anders testifies for abolitionists in London.
In Stockholm he is dismissed from his post at the Academy and works as a doctor among the poor. He falls in love with his housemaid, Lotta Fries. They have a daughter. Sparrman died in 1820.Publisher: Granta
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Lovetown
Portobello Books
Lovetown
Michal Witkowski
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Commie queens Patricia and Lucretia find themselves dancing and strutting their way to oblivion in this 70s/80s Polish underground novel, where sex is everywhere, carelessness and carefreeness are synonymous and Soviet soldiers are easily lead, mostly into bed.
Publisher: Portobello Books
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Villain
Harvill Secker
Villain
Shuichi Yoshida
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Villain, the first novel by Shuichi Yoshida to be translated into English, is the story of a murder: a tale of desperation set in desolate seaside towns, online chat rooms and love hotels.
Publisher: Harvill Secker
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Dark Matter
Vintage
Dark Matter
Juli Zeh
Longlisted, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
Sebastian and Oskar have been friends since their days studying physics at university, when both were considered future Nobel Prize candidates. But their lives took divergent paths, as did their scientific views. Whenever Oskar comes to visit from his prestigious research post in Geneva, there is tension in the air, and it doesn't help their friendship that he feels Sebastian has not lived up to his intellectual capacities, having chosen marriage and fatherhood as an exit strategy. A few days after a particularly heated argument between the two men, Sebastian leaves his son sleeping in the back seat while he goes into a service station. When he returns, the car has disappeared without trace. His phone rings and a voice informs him that in order to get his son back he must kill a man. As Sebastian's life unravels, the only person he can safely reach out to is Oskar. Then Detective Schilf comes on the scene, with a most unorthodox method of uncovering the truth. With intelligence, wit, precision, and grace, Juli Zeh crafts a philosophical thriller which uses the clash of the ideal and the material worlds, the bending of reality, and the search for a definition of time to explore the ideas of guilt and innocence and the infinite configurations of love.
Publisher: Vintage
Boyd Tonkin, judge and Literary Editor of the Independent, commented:
This year's longlist is a fantastic demonstration of the rich range and quality of fiction in translation being published in Britain today and it’s wonderful to see so many languages represented from all over the world. This list is a feast for readers and choosing the eventual winner will be real challenge for the judges.
Judges
Commented Antonia Byatt, Director, Literature, Arts Council England
Literature in translation gives readers new ways of understanding our fast-changing world.
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Harriett GilbertHarriett Gilbert is the author of six novels, including The Riding Mistress and Hotels With Empty Rooms. She presents two arts programmes on BBC World Service radio: the daily arts show The Strand and the monthly World Book Club. Guests on the latter have included Doris Lessing, V S Naipaul, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut, Chinua Achebe, Gunter Grass and Toni Morrison. She has also presented arts programmes for BBC Radio 4, Radio 3 and BBC 4 television. She was literary editor of the New Statesman and, before that, of City Limits. Her non-fiction books include The Sexual Imagination from Acker to Zola and A Women's History of Sex. She was director of the MA in Creative Writing (Novels) at City University London until 2008.
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M J HylandM J Hyland was born in London to Irish parents in 1968 and spent her early childhood in Dublin. She studied English and law at the University of Melbourne, Australia and worked as a lawyer for several years. Her first novel, How the Light Gets In (2003) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Age Book of the Year and also took third place in the Barnes & Noble, Discover Great New Writers Award. How the Light Gets In was also joint winner of the Best Young Australian Novelist Award. Carry Me Down (2006), her second novel, was winner of both the Encore Prize (2007) and the Hawthornden Prize (2007) and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006. Hyland lives in Manchester, where she teaches in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester.
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Catriona KellyCatriona Kelly is Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. She has published widely on Russian cultural history, including most recently Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero (2005), and Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890-1991 (2007). She has also edited An Anthology of Russian Women’s Writing (1994) and Utopias: Russian Modernist Texts, 1905-1940 (2009), and has published numerous translations of Russian authors, including Tsvetaeva, Mayakovsky, Leonid Borodin, Elena Shvarts and Olga Sedakova. She reviews regularly for the TLS and the Guardian, and in 2007 she was a judge of the Rossica Prize for translation from Russian.
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Neel MukherjeeNeel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta and educated there and in England. He reviews fiction for the Times and TIME Magazine Asia and is also a contributing editor to Boston Review. His first novel, Past Continuous, was published in the UK in January 2010 under the title A Life Apart. It won the Vodafone-Crossword Award in India in 2009 and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for Best Fiction in November 2010. It has also been chosen as a ‘Book of the Year’ in the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Sunday Telegraph, the Guardian and the TLS. His second novel, The Lives of Others, is published in 2013. He lives in London.
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Boyd TonkinLiterary editorBoyd Tonkin is Literary Editor of The Independent. He studied English and French literature at the University of Cambridge and taught literature in higher and adult education before becoming an award-winning magazine journalist, as feature writer and features editor of the magazine for social services professionals, Community Care. Already a freelance writer for the Observer, he became Social Policy Editor of the New Statesman, and then Literary Editor, before moving to the The Independent.
He has reported on literary and artistic issues from more than 20 countries on four continents, and his cultural essays have been published widely in books and journals in the UK and abroad. In addition to judging the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize since 2000, he has judged the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Biography Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the David Cohen Prize for Literature and in 2010, the Prix Cevennes in France.
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