Summer Recommendations from the BTB Panelists

Before getting into this list of recommendations, I feel like I have to provide a bit of background and a few qualifications. First off, in no way is this the longlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book Award. We won’t be voting on that until late-November, so please don’t assume that if a book is (or isn’t) on (or off) this list that it’s a finalist (or eliminated).

The list below simply represents all of the titles that the nine BTB panelists (Monica Carter, Scott Esposito, Susan Harris, Annie Janusch, Brandon Kennedy, Bill Marx, Michael Orthofer, Chad W. Post, and Jeff Waxman) have recommended to each other to take a look at. It’s a sort of list of “books in the running,” or more accurately, “translations that some of us have liked.” (And yes, this is just fiction. For now. Maybe we could do something with poetry in the not-too-distant future . . .)

Also, we’re all still reading and reading, with many more books to get to over the next few months. (My “to read stack” has grown from a small pile on my desk, to a bookshelf, to multiple shelves . . . ) I’d like to re-post our complete recommendations later in the year, shortly before the official longlist is announced. (For publishers who want their books on this list, there’s some additional info at the bottom of this post. And no, it doesn’t involve where to send the kickback. That’s strictly need-to-know.)

OK, so reservations and qualifications stated, I thought that I’d post this as our set of summer reading recommendations. I know last year when we did get to the longlist there was next to no chance that anyone could read all 25 of those books before announcing the finalists and the winners. Also, after seeing Amazon’s list of “best books through the first half of 2009,” I thought it would be cool to throw out our own set of great titles. And this list below demonstrates that even though percentage-wise there aren’t many books in translation being published, in real numbers there’s a solid amount of great translations to read—many more than most people could get to in a year.

So, if you’re looking for something to read in the chilly and rainy steamy days of summer, here’s what the Best Translated Book Award panelists would recommend (and by clicking on the title you’ll be taken directly to online ordering at Skylight Books—for books like these, an additional 50-100 copies sold is a huge deal . . .):

• Ghosts by Cesar Aira. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. (New Directions) Review

• The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker. Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (Archipelago) Review

• The Ninth by Ferenc Barnas. Translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchvary. (Northwestern University Press) Review

• Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin. Translated from the Spanish by Kurt Hollander. (City Lights)

• The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. (New Directions)

• The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex. Translated from the French by W. Donald Wilson. (Bitter Lemon) Review

• Azorno by Inger Christensen. Translated from the Danish by Denise Newman. (New Directions) Review

• Wonder by Hugo Claus. Translated from the Dutch by Michael Henry Heim. (Archipelago)

• Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann. (Melville House) Review

• Op Oloop by Juan Filloy. Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman. (Dalkey Archive) Review

• Little Fingers by Filip Florian. Translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis. Translated from the Lithuanian by Elizabeth Novickas. (Open Letter)

• The Zafarani Files by Gamal Al Ghitani. Translated from the Arabic by Farouk Abdel Wahab. (American University at Cairo) Review

• Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. (Melville House)

• Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann. Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. (New Directions) Review

• Crossing the Hudson by Peter Stephan Jungk. Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer. (Other Press)

• The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad. Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland. (Open Letter)

• The Discoverer by Jan Kjaerstad. Translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland. (Open Letter)

• Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull. (New York Review Books)

• Desert by J.M.G. Le Clezio. Translated from the French by C. Dickson. (David Godine)

• She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya. Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver. (New Directions)

• Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• News from the Empire by Fernando del Paso. Translated from the Spanish by Alfonso Gonzalez. (Dalkey Archive)

• Rupert: A Confession by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. Translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchison. (Open Letter)

• The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch. Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston. (Open Letter)

• Rex by Jose Manuel Prieto. Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen. (Grove) Review

• A Thousand Deaths Plus One by Sergio Ramirez. Translated from the Spanish by Leland Chambers. (McPherson & Company)

• Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda. Translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent. (Open Letter) Review

• Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. (Pantheon)

• The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales. Translated from the Spanish by Anna Kushner. (New Directions) Review

• The Loop by Jacques Roubaud. Translated from the French by Jeff Fort. (Dalkey Archive)

• Microfictions by Ana Maria Shua. Translated from the Spanish by Steven Stewart. (University of Nebraska)

• Landscape with Dog by Ersi Sotiropoulos. Translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich. (Clockroot)

• Salvation Army by Abdellah Taia. Translated from the French by Frank Stock. (MIT)

• The Naked Eye by Yoko Tawada. Translated from the Germany by Susan Bernofsky. (New Directions) Review

• Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov. Translated from the German by Will Hobson. (Ecco)

• Pigeon Post by Dumitru Tsepeneag. Translated from the French by Jane Kuntz. (Dalkey Archive)

• Brecht at Night by Mati Unt. Translated from the Estonian by Eric Dickens. (Dalkey Archive)

• In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman Waberi. Translated from the French by David Ball. (University of Nebraska) Review

• The Tanners by Robert Walser. Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky. (New Directions)

• Five Spice Street by Can Xue. Translated from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping. (Yale University Press) Review

And now the comments section is open for debate, other recommendations, complaints, etc.

For publishers: there’s no official way to submit your titles for this award. Similar to the NBCCs, we allow all panelists to make recommendations throughout the year, and on occasion we contact appropriate publishers to make sure that all the panelists have copies of the recommended books. So, in the next day or so, I’ll update the official BTB Page with the addresses of all panelists, dates on when we’ll be announcing the longlist, etc., and other pertinent information. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me at chad.post at rochester dot edu.