Launched by Three Percent in 2007, the Best Translated Book Awards aim to bring attention to the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year.  

Judges base their decision on both the quality of the original work and the quality of the English translation.Eline Vere by Louis Couperus (1863, The Hague – 1923) is translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke (Archipelago).

Dutch dandy Louis Couperus is the last of the great 19th century European novelists still awaiting discovery. But he is most definitely worth the effort. He came to fame with the publication of his first novel Eline Vere (1889), a naturalist work influenced by French novelists like Emile Zola and Gustave Flaubert.

Eline, withdrawn and subject to depression, accepts the marriage proposal of a family friend, only to break off the engagement, convinced that her sickly but charismatic cousin Vincent is in love with her. Vincent drifts in other directions. She travels, dreams, and deteriorates. Moving back to The Hague, she lives alone in a hotel, where during a nervous crisis she takes what may or may not be an accidental overdose.

Tolstoy and Trollope

As Michael Dirda wrote in the Wall Street Journal, July 2010: “With this "novel of The Hague", Couperus produced one of those beautifully composed, old-style realist novels that present an entire society to us while simultaneously questioning its values. If you enjoy Tolstoy or Trollope, you really should try Ina Rilke's new translation of this superb, albeit too little-known book. Louis Couperus was only 26 when the novel was first published, but already he handles his many characters with masterly ease and keeps his prose smooth, light and flowing: Ina Rilke's translation cannot be praised highly enough.”

And here you can find an article from The Low Countries Yearbook about the work of Louis Couperus in English.