Category: Awards

#InternationalBooker2025: Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (tr. Sophie Hughes)

11th March 2025 / / 1 Comment

This novel is Italian, but its focus is international: a search across borders for the perfect life. Anna and Tom didn’t intend to become freelance graphic designer-web developers, but came to it naturally through their youthful obsession with the internet. They moved to Berlin for the promise of a freer life, and were captivated by its unfamiliar sensations:

They would go for walks on endless summer evenings and freezing winter mornings when the blinding sunlight would reflect off the fresh snow. They would gaze up in awe at the vast and changeable northern sky, so different from the one under which they had grown…They were fascinated by the contrast between the recently renovated buildings and those still bearing the shabbiness of the former East – the crumbling or graffitied stucco, the boarded-up windows.

[Translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes]

These are surface impressions, though: Anna and Tom don’t really know much about the history of the city. Their life in Berlin runs along similar lines: a carousel of friendships with ex-pats in similar professions, often structured around artistic events even though Anna and Tom aren’t necessarily that interested in art. It’s busy, but missing something. 

As the years pass, people come and go, technology changes, housing is precarious. Through it all, Anna and Tom try different ways to reach a life that feels full and authentic, a life that can live up to the glossy pictures in the apartment ads. 

What really makes Perfection work for me is the way it embodies what it depicts. It skates over the surface of its characters’ lives, not even allowing Anna and Tom individual viewpoints, and rarely pausing to flesh out their experiences. It ends in a way that both ties the work up in a neat little bundle, and reminds one that there’s no real ending after all. The perfect life is always just around the corner. 

Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2025 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2025: A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (tr. Mark Hutchinson)

4th March 2025 / / 1 Comment

The Narrator of this novel remembers his late friend Fanny. She struggled with her mental health, and could often appear distant, holding herself still within her own body. But there was a lighter side to her, too. The Narrator recalls that Fanny once stole a leopard-skin hat, and wearing this made her act differently:

She also had in her, popping up from time to time, and always when you least expected it, the jovial young woman in the leopard-skin hat she would have been had certain hatches not got battened down one day, by accident, abruptly, as if by a gust of wind. Whenever this woman turned up in a word or a look, the Narrator was astounded. So Fanny wasn’t just this old friend battling against great odds? She was also this perfect stranger, this person no one had ever heard of whose lineaments had yet to be set down.
[Translated from French by Mark Hutchinson]

A Leopard-Skin Hat is an account of the Narrator’s friendship with Fanny, but all told at a distance like this. The Narrator can see his friend is struggling profoundly, but also knows that ultimately he can’t see the world through her eyes. There’s a push-and-pull to the writing, as we see the Narrator by turns get closer to and further away from his friend. 

There is a further distancing, in that even the character called “the Narrator” isn’t speaking to us directly. It’s especially poignant to learn that this book was written following the death of Anne Serre’s sister, and the distancing at work is Serre’s way of approaching that. If the leopard-skin hat in the novel can be seen as a symbol of those times when the Narrator can reach Fanny, then perhaps the novel itself is something similar for its author. 

Published by Lolli Editions.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2025 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2025: the longlist

26th February 2025 / / 2 Comments

It’s that time of year again, as the longlist for this year’s International Booker Prize was announced this week:

  • The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon (And Other Stories)
  • On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber)
  • There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert (Bullaun Press)
  • Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter (Pushkin Press)
  • Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary (Scribe UK)
  • Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson (Small Axes)
  • Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton (Viking)
  • Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Granta Books)
  • Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated from German by Daniel Bowles (Serpent’s Tail)
  • Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  • Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories)
  • On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott (Tilted Axis Press)
  • A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson (Lolli Editions)

I haven’t read any of those as yet, so it’s time to make a start. As always, I will be taking part in the Shadow Panel, and this year we have our own joint Substack. So any reviews I do of the longlist will be posted on there as well as here, linked in the above list as I go along.

Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025: the longlist

4th February 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am a long-time fan of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, which is now in its ninth year. The 2025 longlist was announced recently:

The publisher names above link to the individual publisher pages on each book.

I’m not intending to read the whole longlist, but it is an intriguing selection, and I will be having a look at some. In the meantime, congratulations to all!

A Han Kang retrospective

11th October 2024 / / 2 Comments

I was really pleased to learn that Han Kang had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature yesterday. She has become one of my favourite writers that I’ve discovered during the lifetime of this blog. Indeed, she was the author of my ‘book of the year’ twice in a row. Her writing has a way of getting under my skin like few other authors’.

It also happens that I’ve reviewed all of Han’s books that have appeared in English translation to date, so this seems a good time to look back on what I thought of them. Here, then, are the links to my posts on Han Kang’s work:

  • The Vegetarian (2007, tr. Deborah Smith 2015) – reviewed for Shiny New Books.
  • Human Acts (2014, tr. Deborah Smith 2016) – reviewed on the blog.
  • From 2016, a few thoughts on Han Kang, Lionel Shriver, and a writer’s relationship to their material.
  • The White Book (2016, tr. Deborah Smith 2017) – reviewed on the blog.
  • Greek Lessons (2011, tr. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won 2023) – reviewed for Shiny New Books.

#InternationalBooker2024: and the winner is…

23rd May 2024 / / 0 Comments

Once again, the official International Booker judges and the shadow panel have diverged. We chose Not a River as our shadow winner, but the official winner is:

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Michael Hofmann (Granta Books)

Congratulations to them, and thanks as always to my fellow shadow panellists. I wonder what next year will bring…

Click here to read my other posts on the 2024 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2024: the shadow panel’s winner

21st May 2024 / / 1 Comment

Right then, it’s time… The official winner of the International Booker Prize will be announced tonight, but there’s our shadow panel winner to reveal first. We selected our own shortlist of five, and ranked them individually to award scores of 8 points, 5, 3, 2, and 1.

With a grand total of 56 points, our 2024 shadow winner is…

Not a River by Selva Almada, tr. Annie McDermott (Charco Press)

We also want to give honourable mentions to Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Michael Hofmann (Granta Books), our runner-up with 51 points; and White Nights by Urszula Honek, tr. Kate Webster (MTO Press), which came third with 40 points. We were sorry that White Nights didn’t make the official shortlist, so we’re pleased to give it this recognition.

On to the official winner: will it match our choice, or not?

Click here to read my other posts on the 2024 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2024: the shadow panel’s shortlist

23rd April 2024 / / 1 Comment

Here goes, it’s time to reveal our shadow panel’s shortlist for the International Booker. This year, for the first time, we have a shortlist of only five:

  • Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott (Charco Press)
  • Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann (Granta Books)
  • The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (Wildfire Books)
  • White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated from Polish by Kate Webster (MTO Press)
  • The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated from Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Europa Editions UK)

For more on our decision to shortlist five titles instead of six, see Tony’s post on the shadow shortlist.

We’ll announce our shadow winner before the official winner is revealed on 21 May.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2024 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2024: A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare (tr. John Hodgson)

18th April 2024 / / 0 Comments

At the centre of A Dictator Calls is an examination of a short phone call made on 23 June 1934 by Stalin to Boris Pasternak. The subject of the call was the recent arrest of Pasternak’s fellow poet, Osip Mandelstam. But its precise details are uncertain, because there are multiple accounts of the call, ranging from the official record to second-hand accounts by people of varying proximity to Pasternak. 

Kadare goes through each version of the call, drawing out the differences and varying interpretations. There’s no single definitive account of exactly what Stalin asked Pasternak, or how Pasternak replied, or even why the call took place. Different versions put different slants on these things, and the ultimate impression is one of no stable reality – which, the book suggests, reflects the nature of living and writing in a totalitarian state. 

Alongside his exploration of the Stalin-Pasternak call, Kadare gives an account of his own experiences as an Albanian writer. This puts into context his interest in the Stalin-Pasternak  call, as well as setting up a counterpoint that runs through the tapestry of the novel.

Published by Harvill Secker.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2024 International Booker Prize.

#InternationalBooker2024: the official shortlist

10th April 2024 / / 1 Comment

The official shortlist for this year’s International Booker Prize was announced yesterday:

  • Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott (Charco Press)
  • Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from German by Michael Hofmann (Granta Books)
  • The Details by Ia Genberg, translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson (Wildfire Books)
  • Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae (Scribe UK)
  • What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated from Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey (Scribe UK)
  • Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz (Verso Fiction)

I am still working through the longlist myself, so I don’t have a final opinion yet. But I am sure that at least three of these (Not a River, Kairos and Crooked Plow) will end up on my own personal shortlist. On the other hand, Mater 2-10 struggles to hold my attention whenever I try to read it. Different books for different readers, I guess.

The Shadow Panel will be revealing our own shortlist in a couple of weeks.

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