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Between the announcement of the Best Translated Book Award longlists and the unveiling of the finalists, we will be covering all thirty-five titles in the Why This Book Should Win series. Enjoy learning about all the various titles selected by the fourteen fiction and poetry judges, and I hope you find a few to purchase and read!

The entry below is by Jennifer Croft, who is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN, and National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a Founding Editor of the Buenos Aires Review.

by Ananda Devi, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Mauritius, Deep Vellum)

ChadÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Making the Shortlist: 72%

ChadÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s Uneducated and Unscientific Percentage Chance of Winning the BTBA: 13%

MenÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s hands take hold of you before having even touched you. Once their thoughts turn toward you, theyÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ve already possessed you. Saying no is an insult, because you would be taking away what theyÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ve already laid claim to.

Like the hand snaking up my T-shirt, they need me to lift my skin so they can feel my organs, or even stop my heart from beating. Their urges wonÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™t be constrained. Soon theyÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ll be nothing left to take but theyÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ll keep going anyway.

But why should I let them?

This is the most vivid novel IÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ve read in ages, magnificently translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman. The gorgeous, profoundly poetic writing is completely mesmerizing and viscerally affecting: it gave me goose bumps several times. Cycling through four main adolescent voices in an impoverished neighborhood of Port Louis, Mauritius, the narrative slowly escalates through brilliant and memorable scenes, as well as haunting inner monologues, to its glorious conclusion that manages to somehow be both devastating and uplifting at once.

I am your double. I am your single. I have split completely and totally in two: I was Saad, sitting transfixed in my stiff chair (or stiff in my transfixed chair), and I was someone else, unmoored, observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts, his defiance, his mortality.

There is something so triumphant and so powerful in the structure of Eve, and something so real and touching in these characters, each consistent, unexpected, thought-provoking and wonderful.

My older brother Carlo is gone. He went to France ten years ago. I was little. He was my hero. When he left, he said: IÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™ll come back to find you. IÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™m waiting for him. He never came back. He calls sometimes, but only to make small talk. I donÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™t know what heÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s doing over there. But when I hear his voice, I know heÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s lying, that he hasnÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™t done well. When I hear his voice, I know heÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s dead.

And IÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™d love to kill, too.

A work of profound sympathy and deep desire.