Small world: Impac prize’s version of global literature is distinctly parochial

The 2015 International Impac Dublin literary award’s 142-book longlist, announced this week, looks to be world-spanning, with 49 novels in translation from 16 different languages, nominated by libraries in 114 cities and 39 countries. But a closer look at the longlist for the €100,000 prize turns up a number of questions. Where are the books from African and Indian languages? Nothing in Arabic? Or Japanese?

The prize gathers its longlist from libraries around the world. But as MA Orthofer notes over at The Literary Saloon, the prize “has as many nominators (one) from Liechtenstein as it does from all Africa”. There were no Arab libraries nominating titles for the 2015 prize, nor any from Japan, and there is only one from South America. The blogger at Travelling in the Homeland writes that the single nominating library from India doesn’t fit the prize’s “public” criterion, as it’s a privately run, members-only cultural centre. All three of its nominations were written in English.

Over its 18 years, the Impac prize has highlighted a lot of books in translation, but these have mostly been from European languages. In 2014, the first year the prize listed the nominated books’ language of origin, there were none from non-European languages. For the 2015 prize, there are two from Korean, one from Chinese, and one from Malay.

But these translations raise yet more questions about the best way to find great books from around the world. The two Korean titles were nominated by the “Literature Translation Institute of Korea Library”. According to Orthofer, the same institution subsidised their translation into English. Returning to Liechtenstein: its national library nominated Kurt J Jaeger’s self-translated and self-published The Abyssinian Cache, and it’s hard to believe they weren’t prioritising the author’s nationality above other considerations.

With big languages like Hindi, Bengali, and Arabic, the prize has had few relations. There were no nominees translated from Arabic for its first eight years. Then, when a few translations popped up between 2004 and 2011, they were a strange mix. Alaa al-Aswany’s Yacoubian Building, translated by Humphrey Davies, is understandable, but his Chicago? And Girls of Riyadh is an interesting, popular book, but the book’s English version was disowned by its translator, Marilyn Booth. Samuel Shimon’s Iraqi in Paris could have been a good choice for the prize, but the nominated English version was a composite of different translators’ work. The book has since been re-translated and re-released.

For all the prize’s 18 years, there has been no work by Elias Khoury, no Hanan al-Shaykh, no Bensalem Himmich, no Ibrahim al-Koni, no Fadhil al-Azzawi.

Having more South American, African, and Asian libraries among the nominators might be one stab at a solution, but with a qualification. The Alexandria Library is no less likely than Lichtenstein’s to nominate a local favorite. As Orthofer writes, “surely the first rule here should be: you can’t nominate a book by an author from the country you represent.” This would be an unpopular restriction, but not an impossible one.

The Impac’s 18 winners have been an international bunch, with a respectable eight of 18 being translated from another language. But the languages are also the usual few: two from Spanish, two from the French, one German title, one Dutch, one Norwegian, and a single outlier from a non-European language – Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, translated from the Turkish by Erdag M Göknar.

There are undoubtedly great authors on the Impac longlists, and it’s quite ambitious to bring together a 142-book list from around the world, nominated by judges from around the world. But to be truly bibliodiverse, the prize needs to work harder to forge new connections.