The Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa will compete with Elena Ferrante or Orhan Pamuk for the Man Booker International, British literary prize enshrining the best that is in fiction worldwide. Just move to the shortlist .
After being included in the longlist of 13 finalists in March, a year after the same have happened Mia Couto, Agualusa now passes to the group of six finalists of the prize worth 60,000 euros (to share with the translator of the chosen work): General Theory of Forgetfulness (D Quixote, 2012, that. have earned him in Portugal Award Fernando Namora), History of Lost Girl Elena Ferrante (pseudonym), the Strangeness in My Mind , the Turkish and Nobel prize Orhan Pamuk, The Vegetarian Han Kang, The Four Books Yan Lianke, and a Whole Life Robert Seethaler. That is, stories passed during the civil war in Angola, a female friendship in Naples controlled by the Camorra, the emancipation of a stay of Korean house, an inventory of characters, events, food, objects that epitomize Istanbul, Maoist atrocities, the great famine in China in particular, and the whole life of a man in the Austrian Alps
It is a return to the world and the borders of fiction, according to the jury of this award. – jury, headed by Boyd Tonkin, one of senior authors of the Independent , and composed by anthropologist and writer Tahmina Anam, the poet Ruth Padel and by academic David Bellos and Daniel Medin. It is a varied list and “exciting”. The press release plays a declaration of Boyd Tonkin: “Our selection shows the best translated books beyond the borders not only our world but of the art of fiction. We hope that readers from all over the world share our pleasure and excitement with this shortlist . “
The books in the race
in the extensive press release disclosing the shortlist , the organization of the Man Booker summarizes thus the book of José Eduardo Agualusa, the author of 55 years born in Huambo who now lives between Portugal , Angola and Brazil: a “wild mosaic” that forms a novel that tells the story of Angola by Ludo, a woman who decides to barricade himself in his apartment in the country’s independence eve. Over the next 30 years, Ludo does not come out to the street, survives by feeding on plant and pigeons, and follows what is happening in the outside world by radio and the conversations of neighbors. The routine of this woman is interrupted when he meets Sabalu, a boy who decides to climb up to your terrace. “With the author’s brand image – playful sense, humor and even affection – General Theory of Forgetfulness is a stunning novel, a human story about emotions, hope and the dangers of radical change” , reads the press release.
Daniel Hahn, who has to his credit more than 30 books, such disparate authors as the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago and the Brazilian star Pele football, is the translator the work of Agualusa the competition.
in the race is also Ferrante with the last volume of his novels of Naples, History of Lost Girl (translated in the UK by Ann Goldstein and published in Portugal the Clock Water), centered on the friendship between two very different women – Elena and Lila – who grow up trying to escape to the neighborhood where they live, a “conformist prison violence and inviolable taboo.” After a few years in Florence, the city where family formed and published a number of books that have been well received, Elena returns to Naples to be with the man who has always loved. Lila never freed the city, making it a key part of the system that initially rejected. “Each paragraph shines with intelligence,” says the jury of this international award, “each chapter brings a surprise: a veritable feast.”
The Vegetarian (Translation Deborath Smith) south Korean Han Kang, of the monotonous day-to-day of a middle-class couple unambitious that seems to live in a “vegetative” until the woman, Yeong-hye, decides to commit a domestic act of rebellion – torna- a vegetarian. Little by little, their attitudes are revealed bizarre and Yeong-hye fantasy become a tree. “Disturbing” and “beautiful”, ensures the organization of Booker International, The Vegetarian is a work on the Korean contemporary South, but it is also a novel about the “strangeness”, “shame, desire, and our fragile attempts to understand the other, from one body to another prisoner. “
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