We are proud and excited to announce that Johannes Anyuru’s Ixelles and Anneli Jordahl’s The Bear Hunter’s Daughters have both been shortlisted for the August Prize in the Best Fiction category. Here are the jury’s motivations for the nominations:
Ixelles: Fictive destinies is a capital that can rule the world, while real people that have nothing, run the risk of losing everything – and disappear in forgotten neighbourhoods without names. Johannes Anyuru’s Ixelles is an existential and poetic novel about the evasive power of storytelling, and about a generation of children made impossible to mourn.
The Bear Hunter’s Daughters: The Bear Hunter’s Daughters is a propulsive and rebellious novel about sisterhood, violence and loneliness. When Anneli Jordahl enters into dialogue with a Finnish classic, seven sisters are orphaned and head into the wilderness in order to survive – in a battle between nature and culture, origin and civilisation, desire and the thirst for knowledge. A ferocious story of the yearning to remain on the fringes of society and the price for this.
The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on the 28th of November. We wish Johannes and Anneli the best of luck!