The competition has two categories: best book translated into Russian and best foreign book not yet translated into Russian. The Russian translation of Antonín Bajaja’s Growing Wild (Zvlčení), which was published in 2010 by Globus, has been nominated in the first category and Miloš Urban’s Praga Piccola in the second. The winners are decided by a readers’ poll and will be announced next year in March.

Growing Wild is composed of two regularly rotating story lines, where the odd ones concentrate on a human family, the even ones on a family of wolves. The two lines of narration intersect in the final chapters, when the two worlds meet. The novel was awarded the 2004 Magnesia Litera for Prose and Bajaja also received the Czech State Award for Literature in 2010.

Praga Piccola is a historical novel set during the first Czechoslovak Republic and based on the memoirs of a certain Bertold Neuman (1900–1992), the son of an engineer at the legendary Praga car factory. Miloš Urban is one of the most famous Czech authors, whose translations have been published in many languages including English and German. He is especially popular in Spanish-speaking countries, where his books sell tens of thousands of copies.

Previous nominees include Günter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek and Jo Nesbø. More information about the award in Russian can be found here.