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By Dennis Abrams | @DennisAbrams2

‘The Beauty of This Award’

At the beginning of the year, the International Dublin Literary Award longlist of 147 titles was announced, as Publishing Perspectives reported. What makes this prize special? The prize is formed from the recommendations of librarians at more than 400 international libraries, from Australia to Barbados, from Malaysia to Switzerland, from Slovenia to India.

That list included 43 novels in translation with works by 42 American authors; 23 British authors; 15 Canadian authors; 10 Australian authors; six New Zealand authors; and four Dutch authors.

The list includes The Green Road by Irish author Anne Enright; six novels in translation from places as varied as Angola, Austria, Scandinavia, Mexico, Mozambique, and Turkey, as well as novels from Nigeria, Vietnam, and the United States.

International Dublin Shortlist

• A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola). Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn. Published by Harvill Secker & Archipelago Books.
• Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto (Mozambique). Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux & Harvill Secker.
• The Green Road by Anne Enright (Ireland). Published by Jonathan Cape & W.W. Norton.
• The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine (Denmark and Norway). Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. Published by Atlantic Books & W.W. Norton.
• The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Mexico). Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Christina MacSweeney. Published by Coffee House Press & Granta Books.
• The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnam and USA). First novel. Published by Grove/Atlantic & Corsair.
• Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta (Nigeria and USA). Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt & Granta Books.
• A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey). Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap. Published by Faber & Faber.
• A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (Austria). Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins. Published by Picador.
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (USA). Published by Doubleday & Picador.

‘Readers and Authors Worldwide’

In making the announcement, Dublin’s lord mayor, Brendan Carr, emphasized the importance of libraries and librarians to the award, saying, “Readers have plenty of time to pick their own favorite between now and 21st June, when I announce the winner. The titles on this year’s shortlist were nominated by public libraries in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Sweden and the USA.

“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 2017 shortlist by our laureate for Irish fiction, Anne Enright.”

Margaret Hayes, Dublin’s city librarian, summed up the novels saying, “Issues of conflict and communication are set against a myriad of cultural and family settings and in contemporary and historic time periods. For readers, these stories add new and absorbing characters to our circle of international literary acquaintances.”

The award, now in its 22nd year, is worth €100,000 (US$105,975) to the winner and describes itself as the world’s richest annual literary award for a single work of fiction published in English.

The announcement of the winner is to be made by Carr on June 21. The program’s 2017 longlist is here (PDF).