BOOKS / Independent Foreign Fiction Award: Love, death and a Vietnam vet

The winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Award for February / March is The Sorrow of War by the North Vietnamese writer Bao Ninh (Secker, pounds 8.99), translated from the Vietnamese into French by Vo Bang Thanh and Than Thanh Hao; and from the French by Katerina Pierce. The judges were Anthony Lane, Blake Morrison, Natasha Walter and Michael Wood.

This book joins the shortlist for the pounds 10,000 annual award, which will be announced on 30 May. The other books on the shortlist are The Infinite Plan by Isabel Allende, translated from Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden (HarperCollins); Fima by Amos Oz, translated from Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange (Chatto); The Road to San Giovanni by Italo Calvino, translated from Italian by Tim Parks (Cape) and The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom, translated from Dutch by Ina Rilke (HarperCollins).