IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist and Update

It would appear as though I've dropped off the face of the earth as the updates to this blog have been non existant. I am still around, as followers of my other blogs will know I've been on a month long holiday through Sri Lanka and have now taken up a job working with Indegenous Communities in the remotest parts of Australia. These areas have little or no telecommunications so blog updates are nigh on impossible.

That doesn't mean I've been out of touch with the literary world. I was chuffed when "The Luminaries" won the Man Booker Prize as it is a serious piece of work and a deserved winner, a review will be forthcoming, however I want to be able to do the work justice so that may take some time.

On the prize front the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has announced their 2014 long list of 154 novels (no I'm not going to list them here) and if you're interested the list can be found here:
http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/nominees/

I have reviewed 12 of the longlist here previously - simply use the "search" function on the right hand panel to locate my reviews:

The Detour - Gerbrand Bakker
The Teleportation Accident - Ned Beauman
HHhH - Laurent Binet
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce
The Hunger Angel - Herta Muller
Traveller of the Century - Andres Neuman
The Spinning Heart - Donal Ryan
Umbrella - Will Self
The Garden of Evening Mists - Twan Eng Tan
Narcropolis - Jeet Thayil
The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin
Dubllinesque - Enrique Vila-Matas

Some I liked more than others but all worthy of making the longlist. This year I won't be tackling the shortlist for the prize as the last two years I've found quite a few of the novels to be not to my liking so I'm not going to slog through a pile just to judge the one that I liked best from a mediocre bunch - having said that all of the above books that I have read have merit with probably Beauman's, Binet's, Joyce's, Ryan's and Toibin's falling a bit short - in my humble opinion of course.

I will be back as soon as I can with a review of another translated work I'm just about finished, and will do my best to keep you updated with the literary world and my thoughts from the central desert of Australia.