International Literature Award - Haus der Kulturen der Welt 2011

Shortlist 2011

111 titles, translated from a total of 24 languages by writers from 50 different countries, were submitted by German-language publishers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The following works were nominated for the shortlist
(in alphabetical order):

José Eduardo Agualusa: „Barroco tropical“
A1 Verlag 2011, translated from the Portuguese by Michael Kegler

Joanna Bator: „Sandberg“
Suhrkamp Verlag 2011, translated from the Polish by Esther Kinsky

Edwidge Danticat: „Der verlorene Vater“
Edition Büchergilde 2010, translated from the English by Susann Urban

Mathias Énard: „Zone“
Bloomsbury/Berlin-Verlag 2010 , translated from the French by Holger Fock and Sabine Müller

Elias Khoury: „Yalo“
Suhrkamp Verlag 2011, translated from the Arabic by Leila Chammaa

Michail Schischkin: „Venushaar“
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2011, translated from the Russian by Andreas Tretner

Marie Luise Knott, member of this year's jury, comments:
“The themes of the works submitted are as political as they are private: love, flight, asylum, a father's love and fraternal wars characterize the spectrum, all with an underlying search for humanity in gloomy times. The cultural and geographic diversity of the shortlist, which also represents a diversity of voices and writing styles, shows once again how interwoven our world is. A writer from Angola who lives Portugal; a Russian, who looks after asylum-seekers in Switzerland; a Haitian who grew up in the US but who cannot escape the past; and a Pole who captures the great disputes in the microcosm of prefabricated apartment blocks with a prose of immense density.”