The shortlist has been announced for the 2018 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 (about R1,470,000). If the book has been translated the author receives €75,000 and the translator €25,000.
Yewande Omotoso, who sits on The JRB Editorial Advisory Panel, has been shortlisted for her novel The Woman Next Door.
The Women Next Door was also longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and the UJ Prize.
The ten-book shortlist includes includes six novels in translation, from France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Mexico and South Korea. Six African authors were longlisted for the award, but only Omotoso has made the shortlist.
2018 International Dublin Literary Award shortlist
- Baba Dunja’s Last Love by Alina Bronsky (Ukrainian/German), translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions)
- The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera (Mexican), translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (And Other Stories)
- The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen (Norwegian), translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw (MacLehose Press)
- Human Acts by Han Kang (South Korean), translated from Korean by Deborah Smith (Portobello Books and Random House, USA)
- The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride (Irish) (Faber & Faber)
- Solar Bones by Mike McCormack (Irish) (Tramp Press)
- Distant Light by Antonio Moresco (Italian), translated from Italian by Richard Dixon (Archipelago Books)
- Ladivine by Marie Ndiaye (French), translated from French by Jordan Stump (MacLehose Press)
- The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso (South African/Nigerian/Barbadian) (Chatto & Windus)
- My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (American) (Penguin, UK)
Nominations for the award are submitted by over four hundred library systems in major cities throughout the world, including Nigeria and South Africa.
Dublin’s Lord Mayor, Ardmhéara, Mícheál Mac Donncha, Patron of the Award, said: ‘This is the beauty of this award; it reaches out to readers and authors worldwide, while also celebrating excellence in contemporary Irish literature represented on the 2018 shortlist by Eimear McBride and Mike McCormack.’
Margaret Hayes, Dublin City Librarian said: ‘The 2018 winner will be chosen from this diverse international shortlist which includes six novels in translation from French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Korean. The novels come from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, South Korea and the USA.
‘Issues of violence and crime, isolation and reconciliation, identity and family are set in contrasting urban and rural landscapes. For readers, these stories reveal unfamiliar cultures and countries through memorable characters and their literary narratives.’
This year’s judging panel is Vona Groarke, Nicky Harman, Xiaolu Guo, Courttia Newland and Mpalive-Hangson Msiska, with non-voting chair Eugene R Sullivan.
The winner which will be announced on Wednesday, 13 June 2018.
