The Impac Dublin literary award continues its ever-widening mission to encompass the globe, with a record-breaking 42 novels in translation among the books on the gargantuan longlist for the 2011 prize.

Nominated by librarians around the world, the 162 novels in contention for this year’s award come from 43 countries around the world, spanning works originally written in 14 different languages. The list covers a vast territory in literary as well as geographical space with Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol sitting cheek by jowl with JM Coetzee’s Summertime, while Kim Stanley Robinson’s story of the father of astronomy transported to the 31st century, Galileo’s Dream, touches down alongside the third instalment of Ann Cleeves’s Shetland mysteries, Red Bones.

Judges for the 2011 award include the Irish author John Boyne, the German poet and translator Michael Hofmann and the Welsh author Tessa Hadley. The shortlist is due to be announced on the 12 April 2011 and the winner on 15 June 2011.

See: The Guardian.co.uk

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