The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is awarded annually and celebrates English translations. The Arts Council sponsored prize of £10,000 is shared between authors and their translators.

The 2009 winner was announced in May as 'The Armies' by Columbian author Evelio Rosero. Rosero is the first Columbian author to win the award and he will share it with his translator Anne McLean who wins for a second time.

'The Armies' is a novel about a retired teacher in a mountain village subjected to random kidnappings and violence.

The judges praised Rosero for what the release called “a compelling and poignant portrait of a country and its people devastated by the violence of civil war.”
“Evelio Rosero’s 'The Armies' is a beautifully wrought, gently spoken novel of love, war and grief,” said the panel chairman, Boyd Tonkin, the Independent’s literary editor. “It not only laments the Colombian people’s tragedy but celebrates the universal but always fragile virtues of everyday life.” (Text taken from Bloomberg.com)