Small world: Impac prize’s version of global literature is distinctly parochial

With just two nominations from the whole of Africa and South America, the prize’s reach is far more limited than it at first appears
News: JK Rowling’s alter ego makes Impac 2015 prize longlist

The 2015 International Impac Dublin literary award’s 142-book longlist, announced this week, looks to be world-spanning, with 49 novels in translation from 16 different languages, nominated by libraries in 114 cities and 39 countries. But a closer look at the longlist for the €100,000 prize turns up a number of questions. Where are the books from African and Indian languages? Nothing in Arabic? Or Japanese?

The prize gathers its longlist from libraries around the world. But as MA Orthofer notes over at The Literary Saloon, the prize “has as many nominators (one) from Liechtenstein as it does from all Africa”. There were no Arab libraries nominating titles for the 2015 prize, nor any from Japan, and there is only one from South America. The blogger at Travelling in the Homeland writes that the single nominating library from India doesn’t fit the prize’s “public” criterion, as it’s a privately run, members-only cultural centre. All three of its nominations were written in English.

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