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After weeks of reading, researching, voting, taking recommendations, discussing, and passionately defending, we’ve finally come up with our 25-title fiction longlist for the “Best Translated Book of 2008:”

• by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn (Simon & Schuster)

• by António Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (W. W. Norton)

• by Muriel Barbery, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions)

• by Attila Bartis, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein (Archipelago)

• by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

• by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (New Directions)

• by Céline Curiol, translated from the French by Sam Richard (Seven Stories)

• by Dominique Fabre, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (Archipelago)

• by Rubem Fonseca, translated from the Portuguese by Clifford Landers (Open Letter)

• by Willem Frederik Hermans, translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke (Overlook)

• by Gert Jonke, translated from the German by Jean Snook (Dalkey Archive)

• by Ferenc Karinthy, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes (Telegram)

• by Imre Kertesz, translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson (Knopf)

• by Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux (Archipelago)

• by Halldór Laxness, translated from the Icelandic by Philip Roughton (Archipelago)

• by Amanda Michalopoulou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Dalkey Archive)

• by Quim Monzo, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush (Peter Owen)

• by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)

• by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (Melville House)

• by José Saramago, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• by Victor Serge, translated from the French by Richard Greeman (New York Review Books)

• by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated from the French by Matthew Smith (Dalkey Archive)

• by S. Yizhar, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck (Ibis Editions)

• by Alejandro Zambra, translated from the Spanish by Carolina De Robertis (Melville House)

• by Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (New York Review Books)

We will be announcing the 10 finalists on January 27th, with the winning titles announced on February 19th at a party at the Melville House offices. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be highlighting each of these titles one-by-one leading up to the announcement of the finalists.

In terms of criteria, we only considered original titles published (or released) in the U.S. in 2008. No retranslations, no reprints, no paperbacks of previously published hardcovers were eligible. And what we’re looking for is the best translated book, not just the best translation. Speaking for all the judges, we believe that a great translated book is a combination of a great original and a great translation, and as such, we’d like to honor the book as a book, as a collaborative effort between author, translator, editor, and publisher.

This year’s panelists included Monica Carter, bookseller at and editor of ; Steve Dolph, editor of ; Scott Esposito, editor of and ; Brandon Kennedy, bookseller at ; Michael Orthofer, editor of the and ; Chad W. Post, director of and ; E.J. Van Lanen, senior editor of Open Letter Books and Three Percent; and Jeff Waxman, bookseller at the and editor of .

(And just so everyone knows this is on the up-and-up, E.J. and I were excluded from voting on Open Letter books, and won’t vote on Taker in choosing the finalists.)

For some additional information, click here for an official press release.

(Sorry there’s no link to the Saramago book. Apparently, in addition to freezing acquisitions, the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s innovative new business model includes not listing individual books on their website. Brilliant!)