This post is courtesy of Best Translated Book Award judge, the inimitable George Carroll. Not only is he one hell of a West Coast sales rep for publishing companies large and small, he has an inexhaustible knowledge of translated literature.

The Infatuations by Javier Marias rolled into its publication date with more baggage than the Coast Starlight, more anticipation than the Wells Fargo wagon in The Music Man.

Immediately, the griping and whining started. “It isn’t his best book.” “It isn’t as good as (fill in the blank with any of his previous books).” “I really loved the trilogy, but this…” “Knopf paid serious money for the book, did they know what they were getting?” I even heard someone suggest the book was slighted because of readership loyalty to New Directions, Marias’ previous publisher.

However, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and Slate all made it through their reviews without an audible groan – and for good reason. This is a really good book.

Marias is writing in genre, and he appears to be having a hell of a good time doing it. It’s cerebral in ways similar to Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder. It’s less about the crime, less action, and more about the paths and perception – more philosophic than forensic.

I’ve read a boatload of mysteries, but I can’t remember one that does exactly what The Infatuations does. Not going to outline the plot, but the ending, no spoiler alert here, is dropped in your lap.

I love Marias. I don’t care if what he writes is High Fecking Art or not. And you shouldn’t either.

This book should win The Best Translated Book Award.

The wait is over. Listed below are the twenty-five titles on this year’s Best Translated Book Award Fiction Longlist.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting each and every one of these as part of the annual “Why This Book Should Win the BTBA” series. It’s a fun way of learning about all of these diverse titles, and hopefully finding a handful that you personally want to read.

Speaking of diverse, I want to use this post to point out a couple of interesting facts about this year’s list:

• Twenty-three different publishers have a book on this list, which is unprecedented;

• There are translations from sixteen languages on this year’s longlist;

• This year’s longlisted authors are from twenty different countries.

That’s a pretty solid spread. Not to mention the vast differences between these books: On the one hand there’s Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek’s Her Not All Her, a slim, exquisitely crafted Cahier; on the other, there’s Antonio Muñoz Molina’s gigantic In the Night of Time. There’s the two-volume slipcased A True Novel by Minae Mizumura and Stig Dagerman’s short story collection, Sleet. There’s a very unconventional Arabic work from the nineteenth century just now being translated for the first time, and there’s a novel about an execution from Mo Yan, the other Nobel Prize winner on the list.

Overall, it’s an excellent list, one that will be really tough to pare down . . . But that’s the job for this year’s brilliant judges: George Carroll, West Coast sales rep; Monica Carter, Salonica; Scott Esposito, Conversational Reading and Center for the Art of Translation; Sarah Gerard, Bomb Magazine; Elizabeth Harris, translator; Daniel Medin, American University of Paris, Cahiers Series, Quarterly Conversation, and the White Review; Michael Orthofer, Complete Review; Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books; and, Jenn Witte, Skylight Books. I want to personally thank them all for their hard work.

But this is just the beginning—on April 15th we’ll announce the finalists for both fiction and poetry, and in the meantime, stay tuned to read about each and every one of the following “best translated books” of 2013.

Also, a special thanks has to go out to Amazon’s giving program, for once again making $20,000 of prize money available for the winning authors and translators.

This is what a quote should look like:

Înainte sa se construiasca blocul de vizavi si totul sa devina ecranat si irespirabil, priveam nopti întregi Bucurestiul de la tripla fereastra panoramica a camerei mele din Stefan cel Mare. Fereastra reflecta de obicei mobilierul sarac al încaperii, un dormitor de lemn galbui, o toaleta cu oglinda, câteva plante, aloe si asparagus, în ghivece de argila, asezate pe masa. Lustra cu abajururi de sticla verzuie, unul dintre ele ciobit de mult timp. Spatiul galben al camerei devenea si mai galben adâncindu-se în uriasa fereastra, iar eu, un adolescent ascutit si bolnavicios, în pijama rufoasa si cu un fel de vesta labartata deasupra, stateam toata dupa-amiaza asezat cu fundul pe lada de la studio, privind în ochi, ca hipnotizat, reflectul meu din oglinda stravezie a ferestrei.

I’ll post information about any and all celebrations for the BTBA 2014 here as soon as things are arranged. In the meantime, here we go . . .

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

Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter (Romania; Archipelago Books)