The Duncan Lawrie International Dagger

As Maj-Britt festers malevolently in her hermetic apartment, appeased only by an endless supply of food, Monika works ceaselessly to blot out her pain, punishing herself unforgivingly if she fails to meet her own high standards. They have nothing in common but the determination to obliterate their memories and be left alone - but when a letter and a tragic accident force the past back to life, the emotional void at the centre of their lives gapes wide and threatens to engulf them both. Forced into a confrontation, each woman proves the catalyst for the other's destruction - or salvation. A taut psychological thriller, Shame builds inexorably and subtly into a study of the devastating powers of fear, oppressive religion and forbidden sexuality.

Judges' comments: ‘A clever psychological study of a small group of people brought together by shared experiences of abuse which they must now, finally, confront.’

Karin Alvtegen was born in Jönköping, Sweden, in 1965 and has had a varied career. After being a stage and film assistant working on sets and designs she started to write. Her first novel, Guilt, was published in Sweden in 1998. She moved on to become a scriptwriter and continued to write novels. She won Sweden’s most prestigious crime novel award, the Glass Key, in 2000 with her next, Missing (made into a film and shown in the UK on ITV), and further acclaim with her third, Betrayal. She is the great-niece of Astrid Lindgren (author of the Pippi Longstocking stories), and lives in Stockholm.

Author website: www.karinalvtegen.com in English and Swedish.

Steven T. Murray is a publisher and translator who has been translating from Nordic languages for over thirty years. He is the prize-winning translator of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books.

Four women work at the Danish Centre for Genocide Studies. When two of them start receiving death threats, they suspect they are being stalked by Mirko Zigic, a Bosnian torturer and war criminal. But perhaps he is not the person behind the threats - it could be someone in their very midst. Much of the drama created revolves not only around the scary sense of a killer prowling in the shadows but also around the manipulative games being played between the women in the office as they come under pressure and turn on each other. The irony is that these betrayals and persecutions are taking place amongst professionals who daily analyse cases of appalling cruelty.

Judges' comments: ‘Something completely out of the ordinary: a thought-provoking novel in which workers in a centre monitoring human rights abuses slide into bullying office politics.’

Christian Jungersen was born in 1962 and made his literary debut in 1999 with the novel Underbrush, which won the Best First Novel award in Denmark and was also a Danish bestseller. In 1989 he finished his Masters degree in Communication and Sociology and over the next ten years he practiced writing and held a number of part-time jobs including: copywriter for an ad agency, TV script consultant, and film teacher at Copenhagen Community College. Since its publication in October 2004, The Exception has remained among the top ten books on the Danish bestseller lists. For many weeks only Dan Brown’s works held a higher position on the list. The Exception was sold in record time to twelve countries.

Anna Paterson has degrees in medicine and medical sciences from Lund (Sweden) and London (UK), including a PhD (in Neuropharmacology). In 1998 Anna changed direction in order to write full-time. She has become a literary translator from the Germanic languages (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and German) into English, winning the Bernard Shaw Prize for Literary Translation in 2000 and being nominated for the Marsh Award in 2004. Her first non-medical book was Scotland’s Landscape, a study of landscape, identity and green policy in Scotland and other northern European countries. She writes literary journalism and reviews books for magazines and broadsheet newspapers. She lives in Scotland with her husband and son.

Amin Jaafie, an Israeli Arab, is a surgeon at a hospital in Tel Aviv. Dedicated to his work, respected by his colleagues and community, he is a model of successful integration. On the night of a deadly bombing in a local restaurant, he works tirelessly to help the shocked and shattered patients brought to the emergency room. But this night's turmoil takes a personal turn: his wife's body is found among the dead, with injuries typical of those found on the bodies of suicide bombers. As evidence mounts that his wife was responsible for the bombing, Dr. Jaafie is torn between memories of their years together and the realization that the woman he loved had a life far removed from their comfortable existence together. The Attack portrays the reality of terrorism and its incalculable spiritual costs. Intense and humane, devoid of political bias, it displays a profound understanding of what can seem impossible to understand.

Judges' comments: ‘A harrowing psychological novel which explores the motivations of a suicide bomber, and lifts the conventions of the whydunnit.’

Yasmina Khadra is the nom de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulessehoul, who took a female pseudonym to avoid submitting his manuscripts for the approval of the army. He is the author of three other books published in English, including the acclaimed bestseller The Swallows of Kabul. He lives in France.

John Cullen is the translator of more than 15 books from the French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Last year, two of his translations were shortlisted for The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move from the Italian and Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul from the French. This year, his translation of Yasmina Khadra’s The Attack was shortlisted for The French American Foundation and the Florence Gould Foundation 20th Annual Translation Prize. Originally from New Orleans, John Cullen lives in Millbrook, New York with the writer Valerie Martin.

In a land of silence and snow, the killing has begun ...Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the small town she left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm tax lawyer, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the church of the cult he helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor, and to confront the rumours circulating in a closed and frightened community. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark and impossible to guess ...

Judges' comments: ‘A fine sense of Northern Sweden with a story of mayhem in a small religious community.’

Åsa Larsson was born in 1966 and lives in Stockholm. She is a fluent English speaker. The Savage Altar is her first novel, and was a top-ten best seller in Sweden, and winner of the Best First Crime Novel Award. It has been translated into nine languages. In 2004 the follow-up The Blood Spilt received the Crime Academy’s award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. The Black Path, book three in the planned series of six books, all featuring Rebecka Martinsson as the main character, was published in Sweden in 2006 and the hardcover edition has already sold over 100 000 copies. The shooting in Kiruna of the movie based on the first book is just now being completed. It will open in Swedish cinemas at Christmas 2007. Izabella Scorupco (who appeared as Bond-girl Natalya Simonova in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye) plays the lead role of Rebecka Martinsson. Åsa Larsson is also a columnist with one of Sweden’s largest evening papers, Aftonbladet.

Marlaine Delargy was born in Manchester in 1954, and gained a degree in Swedish & German from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1976. She started translating from Swedish when The Swedish Book Review was launched in the 1980’s - mostly short stories and novel extracts. She was also a guest editor on The Swedish Book Review supplement 2006: Writing for Young Adults. Marlaine lives in Cloebury Mortimer, Shropshire.

Harry Hole, working alone having caused an embarrassment in the line of duty, has been promoted to inspector and is lumbered with surveillance duties. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities; fairly mundane until a report of a rare and unusual gun being fired sparks his interest. Ellen Gjelten, his partner, from his police officer days makes a startling discovery. Then a former soldier is found with his throat cut. In a quest which takes him to South Africa and Vienna, Harry finds himself perpetually one step behind the killer. He will be both winner and loser by the novel's nail-biting conclusion.

Judges' comments: ‘Secrets from Norway’s discreditable wartime past resurface when a lone terrorist threatens an assassination.’

Jo Nesbø musician, economist and author of the best-selling series featuring Detective Harry Hole, has won many prizes for his novels, including the Glass Key, the Riverton Prize and the Norwegian Bookclub prize for best ever Norwegian crime novel. His first novel to be published in English was The Devil's Star, which sold more than 100,000 copies in Norway alone. He lives in Oslo.

Don Bartlett worked as a teacher of English in state education in Austria, Germany and Denmark for nine years, then in the UK as an English Foreign Language teacher, trainer and examiner. In 2000 he finished an MA in Translation Studies at the University of East Anglia and started to work as a full-time freelance translator. At present he is working on the second Kjell Ola Dahl novel to be published by Faber: The Man in the Shop Window. He lives in a small Norfolk village with his wife and two daughters.