The 2024 National Book Awards Longlist for Translated Literature

Tuesday, we covered the announcement of the 2024 National Book Awards Longlist for Young People’s Literature. Since then, this year’s National Book Awards Longlist for Translated Literature has also been released.

The ten titles on the longlist were translated from six different languages—Danish, Arabic, Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, and Swedish. They explore everything from “disorienting realities” to characters who “traverse countries in search of answers” to “the experiences of two Indigenous Sámi families over the course of three generations and one hundred years.”

Here are the ten longlist titles, selected from the 141 books that were submitted:

• The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on the Meaning of Hope and Freedom by Nasser Abu Srour, translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren
• The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain
• Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel
• On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland
• Woodworm by Layla Martínez, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
• The Villain’s Dance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated from the French by Roland Glasser
• Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary
• The Abyss by Fernando Vallejo, translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
• Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from the Mandarin Chinese by Lin King
• Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek, Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price

Winners will be announced on Wednesday November 20, 2024. Read more about the awards here.

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in Breaking in Books.