The 2024 Shortlist

The Living and the Rest by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese (Angola) by Daniel Hahn (MacLehose)

Historiae by Antonella Anedda, translated from the Italian by Patrizio Ceccagnoli and Susan Stewart (New York Review of Books)

The Remains by Margo Glantz, translated from the Spanish (Mexico) by Ellen Jones (Charco Press)

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Zoë Perry (Charco Press)

Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante, translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee (New York Review of Books)

Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French (Rwanda) by Mark Polizzotti (Daunt Books)

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Europa Editions)

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Johnny Lorenz (Verso Books)

Here are the Judges’ Citations:

The Living and the Rest

This is a parable about a group of African writers attending a literary festival on a marooned Mozambican island. They are cut from the rest of the world; no phone signals, or news reaching them—we are forcefully immersed into this apocalyptic world, where stories and stereotypes collide, as the writers interact with each other to explore Binyavanga Wainana’s satirical injunction: how to write about Africa. Beyond the humour, is a story of a dark, vexed world treated with a magical realist touch. There are numerous mysteries in this gripping novel. The novel balances external and internal revelations to create a powerful story of what happens when the world as we know it temporarily ends. Daniel Hahn masterfully renders the book into English with a lightness of touch.

Historiae

In her new translation of this work, Ellen Jones has masterfully managed to capture the rich polyphony in Nora’s monologue. She has been particularly successful in identifying the different leitmotivs interwoven in Glantz’s digressive stream-of-consciousness prose, and rendering their subtle variations, which ensure the work’s cohesion—not unlike Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which, unsurprisingly, are discussed at length throughout the novel. In these recurring but discreet reference points (a sonnet by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a famous line by Blaise Pascal, a tango by Cátulo Castillo and Aníbal Troilo), the heart—both literally and figuratively—plays a central role. Ellen Jones’s translation, whilst retaining the lightness and humour and tenderness that carries the narrator’s thoughts along, aptly keeps the novel’s pulsating rhythm beating until the very last line.

The Remains

The Remains by Margo Glantz, translated from Mexican Spanish by Ellen Jones, is a novel-cum-essay in which Nora García, a cellist, attends the funeral of her ex-husband Juan, a pianist and composer. Next to his coffin, in the house where she once lived, Nora thinks. Behind the façade of this deceptively simple plot, the reader embarks on a vertiginous journey through time and space as Nora starts reminiscing about her past with Juan, as well as a myriad of other subjects, which mainly revolve around erudite commentaries on classical music, but also include the history of medicine, notes on Italian painting and American museums, Russian literature, or French documentary films.

Of Cattle and Men

Of Cattle and Men follows Edgar Wilson as he carries out his daily duties, stunning ruminants at a cattle slaughterhouse. This spare, haunting, and darkly humorous novella is deftly translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Zoe Perry. By telling this story, Ana Paula Maia shines a light on a side of humanity we prefer to consign to the shadows. Rivers run septic, bodies pile up. Of Cattle and Men speaks to the intertwined relationship between human, animal, and the land. This urgent translation offers a response to rural poverty, the cruelty of the meat industry, and its impact on the land, humankind, and not least, of course, the cattle—or ruminants—that side-eye characters and reader alike throughout the text. Perry’s translation of this laconic book draws out a wry humour and the stark, meaning-laden images that punctuate the text.

Lies and Sorcery

Elsa Morante’s Lies and Sorcery is a twentieth-century masterpiece, now made available in English in its glorious entirety in a masterful and luscious translation by Jenny McPhee. Our narrator, Elisa, hears the ghosts of her departed relatives whisper their stories to her, and transcribes them for us. She weaves a tale of manipulation, deception, and failed relationships, following the lives of three generations of women in fin-de-siecle Sicily. This translation is an epic undertaking, and McPhee rises to the task with aplomb, rendering this baroque text with exceptional character and transporting power. The writing shifts between melodrama and heart-rending honesty and bitter irony, at turns tender and mocking. This is a propulsive novel, ultimately giving voice to the crushing drama of loneliness and failed human connection.

Kibogo

This is a short marvellous book filled with a chorus of voices as we are reminded, not all stories are created equal as we ascend to heaven and descend to earth. Kibogo is a story that spans many lifetimes, mystical in its evocation of a great chain of events, but also hints on various futures. It’s a book that gathers up the knots of the past into the tensions of the present. Kibogo, man and story, are presented as the ultimate palimpsest. The story brings to life the old ways through weaving of time and events; an ensemble of characters that are representative and symbolic while at the same time it is very much a book crafting stories and histories borrowing from indigenous rituals, Christianity, anthropology. These forms of narrating, that demand different registers, sometimes leave us with uncertain answers. Mark Polizzotti’s translation is as eloquent as a dream.

The House on Via Gemito

In The House on Via Gemito, Domenico Starnone draws on the genre of autofiction to explore the relationship between Mimí and his father, Federí. ‘Gemito’ means a moan and groan, and there are no shortage of those from the relentlessly irascible and abusive Federí—indeed a reckoning with the family’s neglect of his wife Rusinè is an important element of the narrative. At the same time, the novel exposes a complex working-class man entangled in the politics of post-World War II Naples and the longstanding perceptions of masculinity. Federí is a painter and a railway clerk—he would rather be a full-time painter. He transforms the family home into an art studio. A bedsheet becomes a canvas, friends and family become models, a relative becomes a mastiff in a composition. When Mimí poses for his father he is confronted with a disturbing and distorted mirror since he observes his father and later comes to present him in writing, while Federí observes his son and transforms him into a painted figure. How ‘faithful’ are the representations? It’s the process of investigation which reveals the most.

Oonagh Stransky translates the family and society dynamics into lucid English prose yet fully transports us to Naples by retaining the colourful language of dialect. The multilingual nature of the novel is also reflected in her dexterous translation of body language—this is just one example of how her translation often evokes the visual art so central to the work.

Crooked Plow

Itamar Vieira Junior’s The Crooked Plow tells the story of two sisters bound together by a childhood accident involving a mysterious knife, and the forces—natural, spiritual, and social—exerted on the rural community in which they grow up.  Set deep in the Bahia state of Brazil, it follows three generations of a family of subsistence farmers whose everyday experience echoes that of their slave forebears. Each section is narrated by a different character; the first two parts show the viewpoints of sisters Bibiana and Belonísia, as the courses of their lives intertwine and diverge. They confront the expectations of womanhood and its evolving challenges over time, often through comparisons with the situations of other female members of the plantation. The third part of the novel takes on the transcendent perspective of Santa Rita the Fisherwoman, a vivid figure from the syncretic Afro-Brazilian Jarê religion. The novel explores the themes of vocalization and non-vocalization to ask how the stories of the oppressed community are to be told.

The novel is skillfully translated by Johnny Lorenz, who adroitly weaves together the characters’ narratives and cultural references to domestic life, the labour system, spirituality, and religious practice. The translator’s frequent use of the habitual aspect reflects, in a paradoxical way, both the comfort of familiarity for characters looking back on aspects of their personal past, and the repetitive exploitation which has formed into furrows across history.

The 2024 Longlist

The Living and the Rest by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese (Angola) by Daniel Hahn (MacLehose)

Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Katrina Dodson (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Historiae by Antonella Anedda, translated from the Italian by Patrizio Ceccagnoli and Susan Stewart (New York Review of Books)

Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop, translated from the French (Senegal) by Sam Taylor (Pushkin Press)

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (Granta Books)

Firebird by Zuzanna Ginczanka, translated from the Polish by Alissa Valles (New York Review of Books)

The Remains by Margo Glantz, translated from the Spanish (Mexico) by Ellen Jones (Charco Press)

Summer Fishing in Lapland by Juhani Karila, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (Pushkin Press)

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Zoë Perry (Charco Press)

Exiled Shadow by Norman Manea, translated from the Romanian by Carla Baricz (Yale UP)

Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante, translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee (New York Review of Books)

Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French (Rwanda) by Mark Polizzotti (Daunt Books)

Vengeance is Mine by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (MacLehose)

Sur by Antonio Soler, translated from the Spanish by Simon Deefholts and Kathryn Phillips-Miles (Peter Owen Publishing)

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Europa Editions)

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by Johnny Lorenz (Verso Books)