After an agonising wait (which seems to have been going on for ever), we finally have the fifteen contenders hoping to take out the crown for the best book released in translation in the UK last year – yes, the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlist is here! The final fifteen have been announced over at the Booktrust site, and here they are in all their glory 🙂
*****
Bloodlines by Marcello Fois, translated by Silvester Mazzarella (MacLehose)
Boyhood Island by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker)
By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel, tr. Jethro Soutar
(And Other Stories)
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami,
tr. Philip Gabriel (Harvill Secker)
F by Daniel Kehlman, tr. Carol Brown Janeway (Quercus)
In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomas Gonzalez, tr. Frank Wynne (Pushkin)
Look Who’s Back by Timur Vernes, tr. Jamie Bulloch (Maclehose)
The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, tr. Andrew Bromfield (Peirene)
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, tr. Susan Bernofsky (Portobello)
The Giraffe’s Neck by Judith Schalansky, tr. Shaun Whiteside (Bloomsbury)
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee, tr. Chi-Young Kim (Pan Macmillan)
The Last Lover by Can Xue, tr, Annelise Finegan (Yale University Press)
The Ravens by Tomas Bannerhed, tr. Sarah Death (Clerkenwell)
Tiger Milk by Stephanie De Velasco, tr. Tim Mohr (Head of Zeus)
While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier, tr. Paul Vincent (Pushkin)
*****
Hmm. I have to say that the list is somewhat… unexpected. I’ve only read three of the choices above, 
and big names such as Per Petterson, Andrés Neuman, Elena Ferrante and Matthias Énard have fallen unexpectedly at the first hurdle. That is, of course, if they were ever entered at all – sadly, the secrecy of the IFFP regulations means that we’ll never know…
Anyway, there’s no time to think too much about that – it’s time to get reading! We at the Shadow Jury will do our best to get through the books in a timely manner – stay tuned for views and reviews culminating in a shortlist decision at some point 🙂
Tony's Reading List 
Yes lot more reading hey Tony interesting five german books on the list especially as I thought it been a bad year for german lit how mistaken am I
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Stu – It’s interesting, isn’t it? A lot of numbers – I remain to be convinced about the quality…
But when you think of the omission of ‘The Tower’ (and ‘In Times of Fading Light’ last year), it’s not always the cream that rise to the top here 😉
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If you’re looking for cream, look no further than Erpenbeck …..
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Lizzy – That’s a good one, but there are many which haven’t been selected.
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Doesn’t matter – as long as the right one wins in the end …
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Lizzy – If the right one hasn’t been longlisted… (although we have ideas about that!).
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I haven’t read enough German lit so I am likewise intrigued by the German titles. But looking forward to them. The End of Days was brilliant.
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Joe – As above, I’ll read first and judge later (hard though it is for me!).
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Yes, the number of German titles is surprising, especially as both F and Indigo (if we mean German language) are missing. Very pleased The End of Days is there, though.
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Rosie Goldsmith, champion of German lit, is one of the judges. She is obviously a sterling advocate …
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Lizzy – Although now she’s not…
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???
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Lizzy – She’s dropped out, ostensibly for family reasons, but who knows…
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Of course, F is there! I had somehow got it into my head that only one of my fiive predictions had made it!
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Grant – ‘The End of Days’ is one I *have* read (fortunately!), and I predict that it’ll go far 🙂
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Nice to see a Korean novel on there – not one I’ve read, do I’ve that to look forward to. I suspect the Dalkey Archive ones weren’t entered – the covers are quite distinctive, I couldn’t see them on the table picture.
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Paul – I’ve got a library copy of that, even if it wasn’t one I was exactly rushing out to try. As for Dalkey, I get the impression that they never enter their books for anything. Why? No comment…
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