The Impac Dublin literary award continues its ever-widening mission to encompass the globe, with a record-breaking 42 novels in translation among the books on the gargantuan longlist for the 2011 prize.
Nominated by librarians around the world, the 162 novels in contention for this year's award come from 43 countries around the world, spanning works originally written in 14 different languages. The list covers a vast territory in literary as well as geographical space with Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sitting cheek by jowl with JM Coetzee's Summertime, while Kim Stanley Robinson's story of the father of astronomy transported to the 31st century, Galileo's Dream, touches down alongside the third instalment of Ann Cleeves's Shetland mysteries, Red Bones.
The Dublin City librarian, Margaret Haynes, saluted the wide variety of the selections, explaining that no guidance is offered to participating organisations, beyond a call for "excellence in literary fiction", and insisting that "they do reflect the tastes of the libraries involved".
"Libraries are in the business of bringing books and people together," she said, "maybe authors people might not have heard of. So we're delighted to come up with such a diverse list."
Big hitters from the world of English and American letters in contention for the €100,000 award – the biggest prize for a single novel published in English – include AS Byatt, EL Doctorow, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Atwood and Peter Carey, while well-known authors from the wider world include Orhan Pamuk, Javier Marias and Amos Oz. But with debut novelists Gerbrand Bakker, Michael Thomas and Rawi Hage taking the award for the last three years, established names on the list, such as Nicholson Baker, Barbara Kingsolver and Paul Auster, may wait a little longer before making plans to visit Dublin for next summer's awards ceremony. Notable debut novelists on the list include the poet Adam Foulds, who was shortlisted for the 2009 Booker prize with The Quickening Maze, and Evie Wyld, whose first novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, won last year's Jonathan Llewellyn Rhys prize.
Irish writers on the longlist include Colum McCann, who received the highest number of votes with 14 libraries selecting Let the Great World Spin, and Colm Toibín, whose novel Brooklyn received 13. The veteran short story writer William Trevor, nominated for his latest novel Love and Summer, and the writer Peter Murphy, nominated for his debut novel John the Revelator, complete the Irish contingent on the longlist.
Toibín is one of five previous winners on the 2011 list, along with Orhan Pamuk, Javier Marias, Tahar Ben Jelloun and David Malouf.
Judges for the 2011 award include the Irish author John Boyne, the German poet and translator Michael Hofmann and the Welsh author Tessa Hadley. The shortlist is due to be announced on the 12 April 2011 and the winner on 15 June 2011.
