BTBA longlist short-takes

So the Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist has been announced. (So too the poetry longlist.) My publisher-based prognostication not too shabby (cf MAO's) (biggest miss was the top of my list Tabucchi), but some surprises on top of that: yes multiple listings for New Directions (4) (half of which I hadn't even considered); Open Letter with 3 titles (kudos! I've yet to read the Neuman) (and congrats to Graywolf and Deep Vellum, only other multiples with 2 apiece); different choices for Deep Vellum (which I'd read) and Wakefield (which I hadn't). But the biggest surprise is that Dalkey Archive got skunked; so too Yale/Margellos, Seagull, and Pushkin Press, but Dalkey had more eligible literary titles than anyone else. All in all, about a third of the longlist under my radar, til now.

Given limited intereligibility, there's a fair bit of overlap with the IFFP Man Booker Int'l longlist: Agualusa, Ferrante, Lianke, Mujila (and a different [ie the wrong] Kurniawan). Winnowing this down to a 10-title shortlist (April 19; winner May 4 @ The Folly, NYC) is a task I don't envy; I think Gospodinov, Herrera, and either Lispector or Kurniawan or both have the inside track, but I've been wrong before, and I've more reading to do before being wrong again.

(PS while my attention was diverted, M&G award discussion forums moved on to Goodreads)