While I have been busy elsewhere, the Dublin Literary Award Shortlist of six novels has also been announced.
Chosen from a diverse longlist of nominations from libraries around the world, this award gives us an insight into what books readers from around the world are being engaged by thanks to books being lent by public libraries.
You can see the entire longlist of 78 novels in my earlier post here.
Of the six shortlisted titles below, four are in translation. The novels chosen explore a range of issues including the power of books, racially-inspired hate crimes, relationships, ageing, toxic masculinity, the impact of war, and span many locations and eras.
Shortlisted titles:
Cloud Cuckoo Land (Science Fiction/Fantasy) by Anthony Doerr (US)
The Trees (Dark Murder Mystery/Social Satire) by Percival Everett (US)
Paradais (Dark Underbelly of Humanity Literary Fiction) by Fernanda Melchor (Mexico), translated by Sophie Hughes
Marzahn, Mon Amour (Uplifting Working Class fiction) by Katja Oskamp (Germany), translated by Jo Heinrich
Love Novel (Intense Domestic Fiction) by Ivana Sajko (Croatia), translated by Mima Simić
Em (War Effect & Displacement fiction) by Kim Thúy (Canada/Vietnam), translated by Sheila Fischman
I’m intrigued to read Percival Everett, a writer I’ve been aware of for some time but not read.
I highly recommend Marzhan, mon amour, I absolutely loved it.
I’ve read Kim Thúy before, so I’m eyeing her novel too, despite how traumatic much of the story seems, based on realife stories of happenings in Vietnam, but uniquely, being told from a woman’s perspective and covering many of the subjects rarely written or spoken if elsewhere.
The winning novel will be announced on the 25th of May.
Let me know if you’ve read and enjoyed any of these titles, or are tempted by anything here.
The first two thirds of the book is the story of Luke, a young man who has taken a year out from his teaching job in Dublin and returned to the home he inherited from his parents.
Parents send their daughters to Our Lady of the Nile to be moulded into respectable citizens, to protect them from the dangers of the outside world. The young ladies are expected to learn, eat, and live together, presided over by the colonial white nuns.
A dazzling cabinet of curiosities from one of Europe’s most acclaimed and inventive writers.
With the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century.
One of Russia’s most innovative and exciting poets and thinkers, though high-profile in Russia, her reputation has lagged elsewhere.
A landmark work of history that brings voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant experience.
In the fictional Chinese town of Yong’an, human beings live alongside spirits and monsters, some of almost indistinguishable from people.
Naïma has always known her family came from Algeria – until now, that meant little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she’s learned from her grandparents’ tiny flat in a crumbling French housing estate: the food cooked for her, the few precious things they brought with them when they fled.
Written in three parts, this award winning novel by Lebanese author Hada Barakat, is composed of a series of six letters written in a stream of consciousness narrative that are interlinked. The letters are read, but not by their intended recipient, found between the pages of a book, dug out of a bin or otherwise encountered. They prompt the finder to write their own letter.
Hoda Barakat was born in Beirut in 1952. She has worked in teaching and journalism and lives in France. She has published six novels, two plays, a book of short stories and a book of memoirs, as well as contributing to books written in French. Her work has been translated into a number of languages.
In Damon Galgut’s deft, powerful story of a diminished family and a troubled land, brutal emotional truths hit home.
Anuk Arudpragasam’s masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of devastation of Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war. 
Patricia Lockwood’s sincere and delightfully profane love letter to the infinite scroll, and a meditation on love, language and human connection.
Nadifa Mohamed’s gripping novel about a petty criminal in Cardiff who becomes the last man to be hanged there, wrongfully convicted of murder in 1952.
An astrobiologist thinks of a creative way to help his rare and troubled son in Richard Powers’ deeply moving and brilliantly original novel.
The lives of a fearless female aviator and the actress who portrays her on screen decades later intersect in Maggie Shipstead’s vivid, soaring novel.
Bitter Orange is less mysterious and though it is set in 1969, it has something of the feel of a timeless classic, with its setting in a dilapidated English mansion, with two characters employed by the new, absent owner to make a report on the inventory and architecture of the interior and garden, people interested in old things from the past, haunted by them in fact.
Once settled into her attic room, France spies her housemates, Cara the carefree young woman, who it soon becomes clear is tormented by something and Peter the older lover of antiquities, a man who more than admires, wishes to possess all that he finds alluring.
For me, it didn’t have the same captivating atmosphere, characterisation and thought-provoking aspects present in Swimming Lessons, which is my favourite of the three books and was a five-star read for me last year, however it excels in demonstrating the murky depths of people, who are often not what they seem on the surface, and even when unravelled and revealed may not be telling things as they really are or were. Yes, watch out for the unreliable narrator,.
It is 1947, in the province of Punjab, which sits between India and Pakistan, an area where Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and others live side by side. Tension is mounting as political events cause rifts between friends and neighbours as many of the Muslim population support the area becoming part of Pakistan and many Hindu fear for their lives, while the same tensions exist among Muslims living in the predominantly Hindu parts of India.
The thing they all fear most, that some desire most happens and Asha’s family leave their past behind and head for Delhi. Firoze helps them to escape and Asha leaves with a secret she has kept from everyone, the future unknown.
Word by Word 