'Simpatía', by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón, translated from the Spanish by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn and published in the U.K. by Seven Stories Press, has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.
A suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo, Simpatía has been translated into French, Russian, Portuguese and English. Blanco Calderón, winner of the Bienal de Novela Mario Vargas Llosa and the Prix Rive Gauche for his previous novel, The Night, and with an O. Henry Prize for one of his short stories, is considered an indisputable figure within the prolific panorama of twenty-first century fiction.
The 13 books chosen by this year’s International Booker Prize judges represent the very best in translated fiction, published in the English language in the UK and Ireland. The titles are: Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott; Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn; Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Michael Hofmann; The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson; White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster; Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong, translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Youngjae Josephine Bae; A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson; The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk; What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, translated by Sarah Timmer Harvey; Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, translated by Leah Janeczko; The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone, translated by Oonagh Stransky; Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz, and Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Julia Sanches.