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Erpenbeck wins 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

German author Jenny Erpenback has won the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The End of Days (translated by Susan Bernofsky, Portobello Books), reports the Bookseller. Erpenbeck and Bernofsky will share the £10,000 (A$19,852) prize money, which was presented at a ceremony in London. Erpenbeck’s book was chosen from a shortlist of six, which also included: By Night the Mountain Burns (Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, trans by Jethro Soutar, And Other Stories); Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Haruki Murakami, trans by Philip Gabriel, Vintage); F (Daniel Kehlmann, trans by Carol Brown Janeway, Vintage); In the Beginning Was the Sea (Tomás González, trans by Frank Wynne, Pushkin Press); and While the Gods Were Sleeping (Erwin Mortier, trans by Paul Vincent, Pushkin Press). Judge Boyd Tonkin said of the winning title: ‘This is a novel to enjoy, to cherish, and to revisit many times. Re-reading this jewel of a book, I came to feel as if both W G Sebald and Virginia Woolf would recognise a kindred spirit here.’ The prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author ‘translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom’. For more information about the prize, visit the Booktrust website here.

 

Category: International news