The long list of nominations for Dublin’s 2016 Literary Award has been announced and once again it is liberally peppered with authors from across the globe and a total of 53 nominees coming from translated titles.
Sponsored solely by the city of Dublin, the Duais Liteartha Idirnáisiúnta Bhaile Átha Chliath (International Dublin Literary Award) is an international literary award for works of fiction. It is one of the richest literary prizes in the world with the winner receiving €100,000.
To be eligible for nomination the work has to be available in English (either original or translated) and the book has to have been published at least two years prior to nomination.
Nominations are submitted from Public Libraries around the world and with such a huge amount of material to choose from the list is truly eclectic; as Michelle Pauli said when referring to the longlist for the 2004 prize, “Where would you find Michael Dobbs and Tony Parsons up against Umberto Eco and Milan Kundera for a €100,000 prize?”
So who can we find on this year’s longlist of 160 nominations?
Everyone and anyone that’s who, and that is why this a truly unique award. It isn’t elitist, it isn’t Publishing House led, it isn’t politically, nationality, linguistically, intellectually or anything biased. It’s an award that is based on one thing and one thing only, readability.
Below are just a few of this year’s Longlisters.
Irish Novelist Colm Toibin is very much a favourite for the shortlist with his novel Nora Webster has already been shortlisted for both the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize and is a deserved entrant.
Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today.
It is the late 1960s in Ireland. Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them.
The winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James is also Longlisted.
JAMAICA, 1976
Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught.
A Brief History of Seven Killings chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters – slum kids, drug lords, journalists, prostitutes, gunmen and even the CIA. Gripping and inventive, ambitious and mesmerising, this is one of the most remarkable and extraordinary novels this century.
The favourite for the top prize is The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated by Susan Bernofsky; winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize it would take something special to beat this to top spot.
Who are we when we are born? Who are we when the hour of our death comes? What changes? What remains? By tracing the five possible lives lived and the five deaths of one woman whose life spans, or fails to span, the twentieth century, the magical, magisterial author of Visitation exposes the machinations of what we call ‘fate’ – actually inexplicable and undetermined, an interplay of culture and history, of family and personal entanglements.
How about Stefanie de Velasco’s Tiger Milk translated by Tim Mohr?
Nini and Jameelah are best friends forever. This summer they’re going to grow up. Together. On their terms. But things don’t always turn out the way you plan.. A coming of age novel in which teenage girls wander about a multi-cultural sweltering summer’s Berlin attempting to shed their virginity.
German author Timur Vermes’ novel Look Who’s Back (translated by Jamie Bulloch) is sure to ruffle a few feathers. This black comedy about Hitler’s reappearance is a controversial nominee to say the least.
Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. Things have changed – no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognises his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognise him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own T.V. show, and people begin to listen.
We also have Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, which just missed out on the Man Booker short list.
Homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside,Lila steps inside a small-town Iowa church-the only available shelter from the rain-and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister and widower, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her new found security.
It’s not just authors already held in high literary regard who feature on the Longlist; library readers have nominated Canadian author Miriam Toews and her much loved novel All My Puny Sorrows, it would be lovely to see a less well known author reach the shortlist. The Amazon blurb alone is enough to make her a worthy entrant.
Elf and Yoli are two smart, loving sisters.
Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die.
Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive.
When Elf’s latest suicide attempt leaves her hospitalised weeks before her highly anticipated world tour, Yoli is forced to confront the impossible question of whether it is better to let a loved one go
Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2015 Daniel Kehlmann’s F is a novel about the game of fate and the fetters of family.
Artful and subversive, F tells the story of the Friedland family – fakers, all of them – and the day when the fate in which they don’t quite believe catches up with them.
Having achieved nothing in life, Arthur Friedland is tricked on stage by a hypnotist and told to change everything. After he abandons his three young sons, they grow up to be a faithless priest, a broke financier and a forger.
The full list of 160 books and further information on 2016 International Dublin Literary Award can be found here.
If you go and look, be prepared for your TBR list to explode!
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