For the third time in four years, writer Fred Vargas and translator Sîan Reynolds have triumphed in the Crime Writers’ International Dagger, this time with the first in the series of Adamsberg novels, The Chalk Circle Man.
This Dagger is awarded for crime, thriller, suspense novels or spy fiction which have been translated into English from their original language, for UK publication. The Dagger and cheque for £1000 prize money for the author and £500 for the translator was presented at a drinks reception held at the Tiger Tiger nightspot in London on the evening of July 15.
The CWA Dagger Awards are the longest established literary awards in the UK and are internationally recognised as a mark of excellence and achievement.
Fred Vargas is the pseudonym of Frédérique Audouin-Rouzeau, who was born in 1957 in Paris (Fred is not unusual in France as an abbreviation of this feminine name). As well as being a best-selling author in France, she is by training a mediaeval archaeologist. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.
Read the Wikipedia article about Fred Vargas.
Read a 2004 interview in The Guardian.
Visit her publishers' websites: Harvill Secker (UK), Éditions Viviane Hamy (France).
Sîan Reynolds is Professor of French at the University of Stirling. She has written several academic texts and her translations from the French include books by Fernand Braudel and Claude Lévi-Strauss. She lives in Edinburgh.
The other shortlisted books (described in more detail on the shortlist page) were:
Karin Alvtegen, Shadow, translated by McKinley Burnett, (Canongate)
Arnaldur Indriðason, Arctic Chill, translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb (Harvill Secker)
Stieg Larsson, The Girl who played with Fire, translated by Reg Keeland (MacLehose Quercus)
Jo Nesbø, The Redeemer, translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker)
Johan Theorin, Echoes from the Dead, translated by Marlaine Delargy (Doubleday)
Judges’ comments: ‘This first Adamsberg novel is already a remarkable demonstration of Vargas's ability to open with an odd event and follow it into an unhappy past.’
Synopsis: Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn't search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects and arrests people with cast-iron alibis; he appears permanently distracted. In spite of all this his colleagues are forced to admit that he is highly successful - a born cop. When strange blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, the press take up the story with amusement and psychiatrists trot out their theories. Adamsberg is alone in thinking this is not a game and far from amusing. He insists on being kept informed of new circles and the increasingly bizarre objects which they contain: a pigeon's foot, four cigarette lighters, a badge proclaiming 'I Love Elvis', a hat, a doll's head. Adamsberg senses the cruelty that lies behind these seemingly random occurrences. Soon a circle with decidedly less banal contents is discovered: the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut. Adamsberg knows that other murders will follow.
Ann Cleeves, non-voting chair, is an award-winning crime writer.
MaiLin Li works for Kirklees Libraries and is a freelance literature specialist and promoter.
Ruth Morse teaches English Literature at the University of Paris. She is a frequent contributor to the Times Literary Supplement.
John Murray-Browne is a bookseller.
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