The 2011 awards season marches on:

The shortlist for the  2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature was announced in late March.  The books are:

• White Egrets by Derek Walcott (poetry)
• How to Escape from a Leper Colony by Tiphanie Yanique (fiction)
• Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat (non-fiction)

Quite interesting, this prize.  A debut novelist up against a Nobel Laureate and a MacArthur “genius” fellow.  The winner will be announced at the Bocas Lit Fest on May 1.

The shortlist for the 2011 Best Translated Book Award was announced on March 24.  The winner will be announced on April 29th.  The finalists in the fiction category are:

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

The Finalists’ List for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize was announced on March 30th. From the prize’s website: “Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language”. The thirteen authors on the list are:

• Wang Anyi (China)
• Juan Goytisolo (Spain)
• James Kelman (UK)
• John le Carré (UK)
• Amin Maalouf (Lebanon)
• David Malouf (Australia)
• Dacia Maraini (Italy)
• Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada)
• Philip Pullman (UK)
• Marilynne Robinson (USA)
• Philip Roth (USA)
• Su Tong (China)
• Anne Tyler (USA)

My thanks to Lisa of  ANZ Litlovers LitBlog for drawing my attention to the announcement.  Winstonsdad and I have voiced our disappointment (at Lisa’s blog) at the absence of African and Latin American authors.  However, it is heartening to see two Chinese authors on the list. I’m most familiar with the works of Malouf, Mistry,Robinson and Tong.  Thanks to the prize for introducing me to a Wang Anyi, a women writer.  But come on, prize people, just 4 women out of 13 writers? Previous winners of the prize are Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe and Alice Munro.

There will be more round-ups coming in April.  I’m looking forward to the shortlists for both the IMPAC and the Orange Prize.

Congratulation and good luck to all finalists.