Six African authors have made the longlist for the International Dublin Literary Award, the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.
The award is worth €100,000, with nominations being submitted by library systems in major cities throughout the world.
South Africa’s Mohale Mashigo (The Yearning), Nthikeng Mohlele (Pleasure) and Yewande Omotoso (The Woman Next Door) have made the longlist, along with Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing), Imbolo Mbue (Behold the Dreamers) and Joseph Wanshe (Living Memories).
Mashigo and Mohlele are riding high this year, having recently been announced as the winners of the University of Johannesburg Prizes for South African Writing in English.
Omotoso’s The Women Next Door, meanwhile, was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and the UJ Prize.
Mashigo, Mohlele and Omotoso were nominated by the City of Cape Town Library and Information Services.
The 150 books on this year’s longlist were nominated by libraries in 111 cities and thirty-seven countries. Forty-eight are titles in translation, spanning eighteen languages, and twenty-five are debut novels.
The book that received most nominations this year is Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which was chosen by fifteen libraries in Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Sweden and the USA.
Nathan Hill, who is interviewed in the current issue of The JRB, is also longlisted for the award, for his bestselling debut novel The Nix.
The International Dublin Literary Award is sponsored by the Dublin City Council, the municipal government of Dublin and administered by Dublin City Public Libraries, and aims to promote excellence in world literature.
Over 400 library systems in 177 countries worldwide were invited to nominate books, and prize organisers encourage nominations from countries who have not previously nominated books for the award. Libraries interested in participating should contact the organisers for details.
The 2018 judging panel is Vona Groarke, Irish poet and Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester; Xiaolu Guo, Chinese British novelist, essayist and filmmaker; Nicky Harman, translator and co-Chair of the Translators Association; Dr Mpalive Msiska, author and Reader in English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London and Courttia Newland, novelist and associate lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster. The non-voting Chairperson is Eugene R Sullivan.
The shortlist will be announced in April 2018 and the winner revealed on 13 June 2018.
Scroll down for the full longlist
2018 International Dublin Literary Award Longlist
| TITLE | AUTHOR |
| The Power | Naomi Alderman |
| Enchanted Islands | Allison Amend |
| The Red Bicycle | Dave Anthony |
| 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl | Mona Awad |
| Britt-Marie Was Here – Translated from the original Swedish by Henning Koch | Fredrik Backman |
| The Young Bride – Translated from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein | Alessandro Baricco |
| The Noise of Time | Julian Barnes |
| Days Without End | Sebastian Barry |
| The Other Einstein | Marie Benedict |
| The Mothers | Brit Bennett |
| Seven Days in August – Translated from the original Norwegian by Becky L. Crook | Brit Bildøen |
| The Terranauts | TC Boyle |
| The Museum of You | Carys Bray |
| Baba Dunja’s Last Love – Translated from the original German by Tim Mohr | Alina Bronsky |
| All Things Cease to Appear | Elizabeth Brundage |
| The Muse | Jessie Burton |
| This Too Shall Pass – Translated from the original Spanish by Valerie Miles | Milena Busquets |
| Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid – Translated from the original Italian by Anne Milano Appel | Giuseppe Catozzella |
| Moonglow | Michael Chabon |
| The Wish Child | Catherine Chidgey |
| The Girls | Emma Cline |
| Transit | Rachel Cusk |
| The Extra-Terrestrial Delivery | Sudipta Das |
| Here Comes the Sun | Nicole Dennis-Benn |
| The Wonder | Emma Donoghue |
| The Dark Flood Rises | Margaret Drabble |
| The Sound | Sarah Drummond |
| The Years That Followed | Catherine Dunne |
| Heroes of the Frontier | Dave Eggers |
| Sudden Death – Translated from the original Spanish by Natasha Wimmer | Álvaro Enrigue |
| LaRose | Louise Erdrich |
| After the Lie | Kerry Fisher |
| I Am No One | Patrick Flanery |
| Here I Am | Jonathan Safran Foer |
| The Island of Books – Translated from the original French by Rhonda Mullins | Dominique Fortier |
| Things To Leave Behind | Namita Gokhale |
| Dear Charlie | ND Gomes |
| The Regional Office is Under Attack! | Manuel Gonzales |
| What Belongs to You | Garth Greenwell |
| Waking Lions – Translated from the original Hebrew by Sondra Silverston | Ayelet Gundar-Goshen |
| Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi |
| This Marlowe | Michelle Butler Hallett |
| This House is Mine – Translated from the original German by Anne Stokes | Dörte Hansen |
| The Dry | Jane Harper |
| Like the Starlings | Diyar Harraz |
| Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms | Anita Heiss |
| Where Love Begins – Translated from the original German by Margot Bettauer Dembo | Judith Hermann |
| The Transmigration of Bodies– Translated from the original Spanish by Lisa Dillman | Yuri Herrera |
| War and Turpentine – Translated from the original Dutch by David McKay | Stefan Hertmans |
| The Nix | Nathan Hill |
| Faithful | Alice Hoffman |
| One | Patrick Holland |
| The Repenters | Kevin Jared Hosein |
| The Parcel | Anosh Irani |
| To the Bright Edge of the World | Eowyn Ivey |
| The Unseen – Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw | Roy Jacobsen |
| News of the World | Paulette Jiles |
| Our Tiny, Useless Hearts | Toni Jordan |
| Dancing in the Rain | Lynn Joseph |
| Human Acts – Translated from the original Korean by Deborah Smith | Han Kang |
| Lilac Girls | Martha Hall Kelly |
| Dirt Road | James Kelman |
| The Good People | Hannah Kent |
| The Other Side of Silence | Philip Kerr |
| All Day at the Movies | Fiona Kidman |
| Almost Everything Very Fast – Translated from the original German by Aaron Kerner | Christopher Kloeble |
| One of Us is Sleeping – Translated from the original Danish by Martin Aitken | Josefine Klougart |
| Dear Mr. M – Translated from the original Dutch by Sam Garrett | Herman Koch |
| Two Gentlemen on the Beach – Translated from the original German by Ruth Martin | Michael Köhlmeier |
| Mischling | Affinity Konar |
| None Like Her – Translated from the original Slovene by Olivia Hellewell | Jela Krečič |
| The Allegations | Mark Lawson |
| The Conjoined | Jen Sookfong Lee |
| The Party Wall – Translated from the original French by Lazer Lederhendler | Catherine Leroux |
| Shtum | Jem Lester |
| Death in Sunset Grove – Translated from the original Finnish by Lola Rogers | Minna Lindgren |
| Niagara Motel | Ashley Little |
| The Shelf Life of Happiness – Translated from the original Portuguese by Hillary Locke | David Machado |
| An Isolated Incident | Emily Maguire |
| The Association of Small Bombs | Karan Mahajan |
| The River is Indigo | Suleiman Manan |
| Thus Bad Begins – Translated from the original Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa | Javier Marías |
| The Yearning | Mohale Mashigo |
| Behold the Dreamers | Imbolo Mbue |
| The Lesser Bohemians | Eimear McBride |
| Gone to Drift | Diana McCaulay |
| Solar Bones | Mike McCormack |
| Nutshell | Ian McEwan |
| The North Water | Ian McGuire |
| I Will Send Rain | Rae Meadows |
| Bricks and Mortar – Translated from the original German by Katy Derbyshire | Clemens Meyer |
| Pleasure | Nthikeng Mohlele |
| Flannery | Lisa Moore |
| Distant Light – Translated from the original Italian by Richard Dixon | Antonio Moresco |
| Ladivine – Translated from the original French by Jordan Stump | Marie Ndiaye |
| Billy Bird | Emma Neale |
| Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain | Barney Norris |
| Lying in Wait | Liz Nugent |
| The Woman Next Door | Yewande Omotoso |
| Judas – Translated from the original Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange | Amos Oz |
| Version Control | Dexter Palmer |
| Anatomy of a Soldier | Harry Parker |
| Commonwealth | Ann Patchett |
| The Essex Serpent | Sarah Perry |
| La Superba – Translated from the original Dutch by Michele Hutchison | Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer |
| Black Deutschland | Darryl Pinckney |
| The Attempt – Translated from the original Czech by Alex Zucker | Magdaléna Platzová |
| Sergio Y. – Translated from the original Portuguese by Alex Ladd | Alexandre Vidal Porto |
| By Gaslight | Steven Price |
| Barkskins | Annie Proulx |
| The Hill– Translated from the original Croatian by Tomislav Kuzmanović | Ivica Prtenjača |
| Freya | Anthony Quinn |
| The Bird Tribunal– Translated from the original Norwegian by Rosie Hedger | Agnes Ravatn |
| Today I Learned It Was You | Edward Riche |
| The Museum of Modern Love | Heather Rose |
| The Last Half of the Year | Paul Rowe |
| All We Shall Know | Donal Ryan |
| Cry, Mother Spain – Translated from the original French by Ben Faccini | Lydie Salvayre |
| Panorama – Translated from the original Slovene by Rawley Grau | Dušan Šarotar |
| The Tobacconist – Translated from the original German by Charlotte Collins | Robert Seethaler |
| Ma Belle – Translated from the original Serbian by Persida Bošković | Maja Herman Sekulić |
| Scythe | Neal Shusterman |
| Why Did You Lie? – Translated from the original Icelandic by Victoria Cribb | Yrsa Sigurdardóttir |
| The Black Widow | Daniel Silva |
| The Core of the Sun – Translated from the original Finnish by Lola Rogers | Johanna Sinisalo |
| Moonstone: the boy who never was – Translated from the original Icelandic by Victoria Cribb | Sjón |
| Vigil | Angela Slatter |
| The Last Painting of Sara de Vos | Dominic Smith |
| Swing Time | Zadie Smith |
| The invisible life of Ivan Isaenko | Scott Stambach |
| Fish Have No Feet – Translated from the original Icelandic by Philip Roughton | Jón Kalman Stefánsson |
| My Name is Lucy Barton | Elizabeth Strout |
| Mothering Sunday | Graham Swift |
| All That Man Is | David Szalay |
| Do Not Say We Have Nothing | Madeleine Thien |
| Estoril – Translated from the original Serbian by Christina Pribichevich Zorić | Dejan Tiago-Stanković |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | Amor Towles |
| The Gustav Sonata | Rose Tremain |
| Reputations – Translated from the original Spanish by Anne McLean | Juan Gabriel Vásquez |
| The Man I Became – Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer | Peter Verhelst |
| The Latecomer – Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer | Dimitri Verhulst |
| The Break | Katherena Vermette |
| I’ll Sell You a Dog – Translated from the original Spanish by Rosalind Harvey | Juan Pablo Villalobos |
| Living Memories | Joseph Wanshe |
| Miss Jane | Brad Watson |
| The Underground Railroad | Colson Whitehead |
| A Beautiful Young Wife – Translated from the original Dutch by Sam Garrett | Tommy Wieringa |
| Another Brooklyn | Jacqueline Woodson |
| The Lost Time Accidents | John Wray |
| Multiple Choice – Translated from the original Spanish by Megan McDowell | Alejandro Zambra |
This story has been updated to include Living Memories as an African title.
