BTBA 2011 fiction shortlist book club

Apparently we English-speaking readers only read 3% translated fiction. That's not a great number: it bespeaks insularity. The good people at Rochester Uni are out to fix that. They have an annual Best Translated Book Award:

http://www.besttranslatedbook.org/

Check out the finalists for this year (alphabetical order) -

- The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive)
- A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin (Small Beer)
- The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis (New York Review Books)
- Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)
- Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar), translated from the French by David Bellos (Yale University Press)
- The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books)
- On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey (Dalkey Archive)
- Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns (Tin House)
- Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Archipelago)

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=3175

How about reading them all - say one a month - and talking about them here in this group?

We only need a few people to make this happen so I hope some of you will join in.

If no one joins I'm going to read them anyway but obviously I won't bother talking to myself on this group, if I'm going to be the only one. So if you are interested, let me know, and we'll work out an order to read them in ...