Horses of God by Mahi Binebine, from the French by Lulu Norman (Morocco; Tin House)

Horses of God is narrated from beyond the grave by one of four childhood friends who wrench an existence in the Sidi Moumen slums in Casablanca. They form a soccer team that competes with teams from the other slums and dream of a soccer as a vehicle to escape from the squalor, violence, and unemployment. However, their fate is changed when they are attracted to a religion that offers them guidance and purpose, and training in martial arts.

Their choices and decisions transform them from lives of despair to religious extremism, and ultimately to become suicide bombers. The book is based on the 2003 suicide bombings at Casablanca糖心传媒檚 Hotel Farah.

Blinding by Mircea C膬rt膬rescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Romania; Archipelago Books)

In a year of stiff competition, including from Archipelago糖心传媒檚 other leading candidate for the BTBA, Karl Ove Knausgaard糖心传媒檚 My Struggle: Book Two糖心传媒�Blinding stands apart as a work that transcends the intimate thoughts of the central male narrator and expands a vision of reality to include all dimensions of time and space. Seriously, it糖心传媒檚 a wild read. And it糖心传媒檚 weird to see Knausgaard compared to Proust, when Knausgaard糖心传媒檚 My Struggle reminds me far more of Dave Eggers糖心传媒檚 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, you live fully inside the minutiae of mundane daily existence wherein the narrator making his way through the world. C膬rt膬rescu is far more akin to Proust in that he traces out the full extents of what the human mind and its capacity for memory can contain and create at once: the brain is a dangerous tool, and the weapon of memory can destroy us even as it liberates us out of the mundanity of our existence. Memory is everything, and you have the power to create memories out of nothing. Blinding is an experiment in memory-creation. Mythmaking is memory-creation. Memory is power. Memory is existence.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy; Europa Editions)

There is something about Elena Ferrante as a writer that is difficult to ignore. She never misses a beat. Her novels, as varied as they are, don糖心传媒檛 waver; they are consistently thoughtful, provocative, smothering and honest. This novel was my personal pick to be put on the longlist. She has been brilliant for so long and deserves the Oscar. Her brilliance isn糖心传媒檛 limited to her mechanics, her finesse or her creativity as a writer, but it糖心传媒檚 her willingness to continually address the psychological machinations of women who have very unfeminine feelings.

Tirza by Arnon Grunberg, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett (Netherlands; Open Letter Books)

How to describe a book as affecting and unusual as Tirza I could cobble together a few puffed-up jacket blurb superlatives糖心传媒攕omething like, 糖心传媒淗ilarious Disturbing Subtle Horrific Masterpiece,糖心传媒� or maybe 糖心传媒淧sycho-Cultural Familial Catastrophic Tour-De-Force.糖心传媒� But no, the best way to proceed in this instance is to accept that, confined to this meager space, I won糖心传媒檛 be able to do justice to this irreducible book.

So I should start by admitting that I was totally unprepared for Tirza. To be honest, I would be scared to meet the person who is prepared for it. Two paragraphs in, I understood the caliber of writer I was dealing with. By the second page I had already laughed out loud. And from then on I was hopelessly immersed in the pathetic, compelling world of J枚rgen Hofmeester.

My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Norway; Archipelago Books)

I糖心传媒檝e read three volumes of My Struggle so far, and I糖心传媒檓 almost certain that I like Vol 2 the best. I hate comparisons of My Struggle to Proust because they always end up being purely superficial, but I糖心传媒檓 going to make another superficial comparison for reasons that I hope will be evident: I kind of liken this volume to the second volume of Proust. Nine out of ten people adore Within a Budding Grove the most of all volumes of Proust because it糖心传媒檚 the love volume. Proust is using all of his talents to describe love at its most rapturous and incandescent phase, and he糖心传媒檚 processing it through his own memory, which of course makes it even more romantic and memorable. Not to mention, love stories tend to make for great narratives, another thing that makes the second volume of Proust much easier to read and more memorable than other volumes. There糖心传媒檚 a certain sort of immediacy there that糖心传媒檚 hard to match with any other kind of story.

Seiobo There Below by L谩szl贸 Krasznahorkai, from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (Hungary; New Directions)

Krasznahorkai, like Beckett, writes like a pilgrim whose temple has been destroyed, who owns nothing but the bruises on his feet. To our astonishment, he shows us that the concerns we thought we had left behind 糖心传媒� how to make art as an offering and a plea to the gods, for example 糖心传媒� are in fact terribly modern. As we journey through the seventeen chapters of Seiobo There Below 糖心传媒� each of which displays remarkable erudition, pathos, and humor 糖心传媒� we come to understand the urgency of our spiritual predicament, the poverty and despair that we have chosen and that is beyond our power to undo.

But even there at the edge of the apocalypse, Krasznahorkai offers us two beaten pearls of hope.

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters (Japan; Other Press)

In her prologue (which, by the way, contains what is probably the best piece of writing about writing I糖心传媒檝e ever read), Mizumura outlines her intent in A True Novel to execute a sprawling epic in the tradition of western classics糖心传媒攚hat in Japanese is called honkaku shosetsu, loosely translated as 糖心传媒榯rue novel糖心传媒�. This form is presented in contrast to shishosetsu, or 糖心传媒業-novel糖心传媒�, the more traditionally Japanese novelistic form of autobiographical narrative. To this end, she employs none other than Wuthering Heights, reimagining Bront毛糖心传媒檚 classic in postwar Japan.

The African Shore by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated from the Spanish by Jeffrey Gray (Guatemala; Yale University Press)

In that narration, what impresses me most is the ambiguous specificity of the writing. Rey Rosa demonstrates a profound mastery of negative capability, all the more impressive given the diversity of his subject matter. He manages to evoke a world of complexity糖心传媒擫atino tourists and unquestioning locals, economic migrants and drug peddlers, and even French residents not all too far removed from their colonialist fore-bearers糖心传媒攚ith the sparsest of prose. His depiction of post-colonial Tangier, significantly evolved from the Tangier of his mentor Paul Bowles, is pitch perfect and rings true to my years in Morocco. For an author relating a story about the mutual incomprehension of cross-cultural encounters, Rey Rosa shows just how much he really gets people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Occasionally, a quarter page exchange will distill the essence of hour-long conversations I糖心传媒檝e had with French people or Hispanics, or Moroccans.

Leg Over Leg Vol. 1 by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies (Lebanon; New York University Press)

That糖心传媒檚 already one reason why this book should win the BTBA: it blows our (pre-)conceptions of Arabic literature out of the water. It certainly did mine. Sure, I糖心传媒檝e made my way through Naguib Mahfouz and Elias Khoury, and a variety of the translations of Arabic novels from the past decades, but I never managed to get much of a sense of anything earlier than, say, Tawfiq al-Hakim. Sure, there糖心传媒檚 always the Arabian Nights, but that stands so distant and apart from everything else that it feels entirely separate. Arabic fiction 糖心传媒� in translation 糖心传媒� always seemed to be twentieth (generally later-twentieth) and twenty-first century fiction, much of it strongly shaped by so-called Western influences. And then I pick this up and get an electrifying jolt, finding a mid-nineteenth century literary work that is as radical and inventive as any modern novel. I thought I had a decent sense of modern Arabic literature, and suddenly I found myself exposed to a whole new layer underlying it all, throwing a whole new light on all of it.

The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff, translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent (Netherlands; Pushkin Press)

In its rough outlines, Jan Jacob Slauerhoff糖心传媒檚 The Forbidden Kingdom (translated by Paul Vincent) sounds like the a great genre novel糖心传媒攖ime-travel! possession! conspiring monks! But like other great modernist works糖心传媒攖his one was originally published in 1932糖心传媒攊t uses its subject matter as a means to play with expectation and certainty. It is a strange book, at times difficult to follow as it shifts between characters and centuries, but it is also something of a page-turner. It brings to mind Joseph Conrad, but without quite the same ponderousness, and somewhat remarkably, David Mitchell糖心传媒檚 Cloud Atlas.