2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Shortlist

EIGHT NOVELS have been shortlisted for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award worth 100,000 euros, the world’s richest prize for a single work of fiction published in or translated into English. And Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead, 2008), winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award, is on the shortlist. Díaz is one of four Americans on the shortlist; the others are David Leavitt, Travis Holland and Michael Thomas. There are two translated fiction: Jean Echenoz’s Ravel (French) and Roy Jacobsen’s The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (Norwegian). There are three first-time novelists: Junot Díaz, Michael Thomas and Travis Holland.

Here’s the shortlist in full:

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead, 2007) / Junot Díaz
2. The Indian Clerk (Bloomsbury, 2007) / David Leavitt
3. Ravel (trans. from the French by Linda Coverdale) (New Press, 2007) / Jean Echenoz
4. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Hamish Hamilton/Harcourt, 2007) / Mohsin Hamid
5. The Archivist’s Story (Dial, 2007) / Travis Holland
6. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles (trans. from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw) (John Murray, 2007) / Roy Jacobsen
7. Animal’s People (Simon & Schuster, 2007) / Indra Sinha
8. Man Gone Down (Grove/Atlantic, 2006) / Michael Thomas

The winner will be announced on June 11, 2009