The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, supported by Arts Council England in association with Champagne Taittinger, celebrates an exceptional work of fiction by a living author which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the UK.

Fiction and short stories are eligible and the Prize acknowledges both the novelist and the translator equally, recognising the importance of the translator in their ability to bridge the gap between languages and cultures.

Authors vying for the Prize this year include Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for The Museum of Innocence, a rich and humorous love story depicting a panoramic view of life in Istanbul; bestselling Israeli author, David Grossman, for To the End of the Land, described as a modern ‘War and Peace’; and German writers, Jenny Erpenbeck for her internationally bestselling novel Visitation and Juli Zeh for the psychological thriller, Dark Matter.

The list also features a number of South American writer; Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez is longlisted for his latest novel, The Secret History of Costaguana, Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo is nominated for Red April, winner of Spain’s coveted Alfaguara Prize, and Argentinean author Marcelo Figueras features for Kamchatka, an adventure story about a young boy forced to square fantasy against reality.

The longlist offers an assortment of cultures with writers working in Swedish, Czech, Polish, Japanese, Norwegian and French - this feast of foreign fiction offers readers the chance to escape in to other worlds and sample the best writing from around the globe.

Read more about the nominees, judges and the prize itself:

• Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: Writers on the front line
• One Minute With: MJ Hyland, novelist
• Book Of A Lifetime: A Bend in the River, By VS Naipaul
• Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: This year's shortlist spans a world of great writing
• Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: Latin America is back with a boom
• Win the 15 books up for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize - and a bottle of Tattinger champagne